Students

Transformative. Challenging. An embodiment of the CMC spirit.

This year’s Woolley Fellows—Laleh Ahmad ’20, Sabrina Hartono ’21, and Sophia Krivatsy ’20—are grateful for how the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum has shaped their growth and education at CMC. No longer just visitors, the trio will serve as student faces for the Ath by introducing speakers, initiating head-table discussions, and facilitating the Q&A period during the 2019-20 academic year.

Three CMC students were named winners of the annual Harold T. Geneen Charitable Trust case competition and will share the $5,000 prize for future student opportunities.

A crucial test of the leadership skills Lindsay Burton ’19 developed at CMC came last summer, during the month of intensive training ROTC cadets go through in Fort Knox, Kentucky, to qualify for commissioning.

After two weeks of sleeping on the ground in the woods and eating meals out of a bag, Burton said she didn’t feel ready for what came next. Her training officer asked her, as a platoon leader, to conduct an area defensive (an exercise where cadets must hold a position against an opposing force)—something she had never done before.

Whether it’s starting a therapeutic photography program at a group home in Pomona or teaching and conducting research in diverse locations around the world, CMC students are ready to make a difference near and far.

The spark: “My dad taught high school science in Portland before becoming an insurance agent in Montana. My mom teaches general sciences at an elementary school. Growing up in Montana, we’d go hiking every weekend in the summer. My parents were Mr. and Mrs. Nature. A bird would call in a tree; my dad would answer back and tell me what kind of bird it was. We looked at fossils in rocks that we picked up on hikes. When we’d catch fish in summer or go ice fishing in winter, we’d talk about the biology of fish and how they survived in cold waters.

A record 22 first-year students have been named 2019 Appel fellows and will pursue independent writing projects over the summer.

The Appel Fellowship, funded by Joel Appel ’87, provides students completing their first year at CMC with a distinct summer opportunity to explore storytelling in a domestic or international setting. Students share their work when they return to campus in fall.

First-year students Sofia Victoria de la Pena ’22 and Toluwani Roberts ’22 are this year's winners of the CMC Summer Book Writing Prize.

Their essays on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein were chosen by the CMC Writing Committee and will be published in Discourse Magazine, a student-run literary/arts publication supported by the Center for Writing and Public Discourse. A discussion with de la Pena and Roberts is scheduled for 4:15 p.m., April 15, at the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies.

Make it back-to-back world championships for CMC Model UN.

Over spring break, the team of 11 beat Princeton University to win Best Small Delegation at the 28th annual Harvard World Model United Nations Conference in Madrid, Spain. Including last year’s victory in Panama City, CMC Model UN teams have been crowned champs at four of the last five WorldMUN competitions.