2022-23 Presidential Scholars announced

The list of ten students selected as this year’s SUNY Geneseo Presidential Scholars was recently released and posted on the Geneseo website. Presidential Scholars are graduating students who have demonstrated academic excellence and exemplify Geneseo’s institutional values of learning, creativity, belonging, civic engagement, and sustainability.

In order to be considered for a Presidential Scholarship, a student must be nominated by a faculty member in recognition of their achievements as a Geneseo student. The student is then considered by a committee chaired by Senior Assistant to the Provost Kathleen Atts, and the chosen Scholars for the year are announced during the Fall semester.  

As Presidential Scholars, the students are consulted for advice on academic matters, meet with the provost to discuss college planning initiatives, and have the chance to plan a project or initiative to improve the Geneseo community, according to the Geneseo website. 

Interim Associate Provost for Academic Success David Parfitt said that the Scholars recently decided on a social media campaign as their initiative to benefit the community. According to Parfitt, the Scholars all agreed that they could not have achieved what they have without the support of others, and that sentiment evolved into a campaign to normalize receiving support wherever necessary. 

“What I was asked to do is work with the group to come up with some sort of project that would be of benefit to the Geneseo community. In the past, what Presidential Scholars have worked on are things like promoting integrative learning. The past couple of years with the pandemic it's kind of been hard to get the students involved in a project because they were spread out in so many different places. But my approach this year was, we gathered as scholars together and we've been meeting about every other week this semester, and I wanted it to be a project that would be a benefit to the college community but also that came from them as well, that they were invested in. So, we were bouncing a lot of ideas off of each other and something rose to the top. And that was coming up with a campaign to normalize support. And that could be support of all kinds. It could be academic support, mental health and well-being, support along issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. What the Presidential Scholars really wanted to get across is that they wouldn’t be where they were without getting the support of the Geneseo community,” said Parfitt. 

Parfitt said that the campaign would likely take place over the Spring semester, and that the Scholars were working with college staff including himself and Director of Media Relations Monique Patenaude. 

According to Parfitt, the Office of Academic Success is encouraging more students to aspire to the level of Presidential Scholar by becoming more active in the Geneseo community and taking advantage of the modes of support offered by the college and the community. He said that he hopes the upcoming campaign inspires other students to realize that they too can qualify for recognition and be awarded for their achievements.