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When Isabella began college as a Division I athlete, her future seemed set, but life had other plans. After suffering a serious injury and facing the emotional toll of poor treatment from teammates, she made the heartbreaking decision to walk away from the sport that had once defined her. For many, that might have been the end of the story—but for her, it was a turning point. She rebuilt her life at ɫ��Ƶ���� with resilience and quiet determination, diving into her academic passions in economics and data science. She found her voice again and used it to lift others, mentoring young entrepreneurs all over the world, engaging in research and leading by example in her community. Her journey is not just one of recovery but one of reinvention. She’s proof that success isn’t always a straight line and that grit, heart and a refusal to give up can carry you further than any medal ever could.

Tommy Bonn was an inspiring and amazing PhD student in our program. He wrote an outstanding dissertation in philosophy called “Plato’s Anti-Harm Principle.” He was an outstanding teacher and won two teaching awards during his time here. He taught as a graduate part-time instructor through the pandemic and gave everything to his students as we pivoted online, even while he struggled to carry on during lockdown. He contributed enormously to the department—serving as lead graduate teacher, organizing a Rocky Mountain Philosophy Conference, serving as graduate student co-president, serving as Graduate and Professional Student Government department representative and serving as intramural athletics coordinator for our department (a.k.a., “Sports Czar”). I nominate Tommy enthusiastically for the “Amazing Student Award.” 

Sophia is an extraordinary student leader whose commitment to creativity and community has transformed the media arts program at CU. As the student leader of GUT-C (Give Us the Camera!), Sophia has created brave, inclusive spaces for students to grow as artists and technicians. She organizes workshops, mentors peers and models a collaborative, curious approach to learning. Sophia leads with vision and care—she listens deeply, advocates for others and builds coalitions across disciplines. Her leadership is not about visibility or recognition; it’s about creating access, making it work, belonging and collective empowerment. Through her work, Sophia has made a lasting impact on our department and beyond!

Virginia embraces challenges and views failures as opportunities for learning and growth. Her zest for life is impressive! She has a maturity beyond her years that shines in her accomplishments. Her academic excellence started early with all A’s in every grade. While she graduated high school as valedictorian with the highest GPA, with college credits, she was so humble that many didn’t realize she was the leader of their class, even though she was well known by all. CU’s freshman year brought many challenges, but she persevered and overcame these hurdles to rise above. Persistence awarded her a place on the dean's list with academic excellence again! The ENVS major is a perfect example of Virginia's need to change the world. She is memorable, kind and always smiling. She is hardworking, an animal lover, musically talented, funny and fun! All while being humble of her talents.

Erin is the epitome of hard work, persistence and resilience. She had to do her PhD qualifying exam via Zoom shortly after the university closed due to the pandemic. She encountered countless unanticipated setbacks during her PhD, but she forged a path forward through her own creativity and ingenuity. Instead of getting frustrated and bitter at her thorny and windy path, Erin used her experiences to teach others. She was a committed mentor for both grad and undergrad students in the lab and the go-to person for how to troubleshoot a challenging problem. Her generosity of spirit made the lab a very special place, and she will be deeply missed.

1. Excellence in research: Jonah’s research and publication record is outstanding (top 1%) for scholars at his career stage for both its quality and quantity. In fewer than five years at ɫ��Ƶ����, Jonah has led five first-author peer-reviewed research papers (two published, two under review, one in preparation) and five co-author peer-reviewed publications. Jonah is a climate Buff. Jonah’s work provides tools and science to assess and fingerprint the processes controlling the emergence of human-caused radiation and surface temperature changes over natural variability. Jonah is a space Buff. As a part of this work, Jonah is an active science team member for a pair of satellites that launched in June 2024 (PREFIRE). Jonah built a satellite simulator to enable comparison between the new observations and numerical models of the atmosphere and earth system. This work is highly technical and detail-oriented, requiring coupling together complex software engineering and building new infrastructure for global coupled climate models. In recognition of his research excellence, Jonah was awarded a prestigious NASA graduate student fellowship to partly fund his PhD (NASA FINESST 2022-2025) and an Outstanding Student Presentation Award at an international meeting (AGU OSPA 2023).
2. Excellence in academic and teaching record: Jonah has an exceptional academic record with a near-perfect GPA both in his graduate coursework in atmospheric and oceanic sciences (3.97) and undergraduate degree in physics (3.94). Jonah has excelled at finding opportunities to make real impacts on teaching at CU. The most impressive example is that Jonah worked with a team of graduate student leaders from across campus to both develop and teach a new course relevant to sustainability, which was featured at CU’s 2025 Sustainability Summit (GEOG4002: Climate Action Planning). Jonah has also been a teaching assistant within ATOC, winning a departmental award for his instructional excellence.
3. Service to CU undergraduate research: While at CU, Jonah has increased access to research opportunities for undergraduates, especially by making it accessible for those who are new to research and have backgrounds different from his. Jonah mentored summer undergraduate research on authentic research questions in 2021 (online), 2022, 2023 and 2025 (planned). This dedication to undergraduate research mentoring is exceptional and far exceeds expectations.

In addition to pursuing research at CU, Allie played a major role in organizing the 2025 CU*iP Conference held at ɫ��Ƶ����. Her research involved precision time-keeping for navigation positioning and timing applications, and she worked on a new scheme to improve Rubidium optical clocks. She wrote and defended an honors thesis based on this work, which earned her a summa cum laude designation from the Arts and Sciences Honors Council last May.

I’ve worked with Zaidee (they/them) in the Sociology Honors Program over the past year. They are an absolute joy to have in the classroom and always have a positive outlook on life. Zaidee has been a source of support for many of their peers in the honors program and recently defended their honors thesis, which considers all-gender restrooms and the importance of these facilities when it comes to issues of equity, accessibility and inclusivity. Zaidee developed an online survey regarding about attitudes and experiences about all-gender restrooms, wrote and conducted semi-structured interviews to gather more in-depth experiential accounts and analyzed their data for statistical significance of correlations between relevant demographic categories and opinions and qualitatively looking for themes in use and attitudes. Zaidee’s work, which specifically focused on the experiences of ɫ��Ƶ���� students, was extremely professional, clear and very well written.