The WGSS Award for Academic Excellence goes to both WGSS major, Jessica Tom, and WGSS minor, Jeanette Blanchette.

Professor Ritch Calvin presents the award to Jessica Tom:

I am very happy to announce that Jessica Tom has been awarded the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Award for Academic Excellence. Jessica is a double major in Biology and WGSS. As she has noted in class, the two majors, and the classes for each major, really draw on and activate different ways of thinking.

I have just completed reading her final essay for WST 305. In this class, we have focused on questions of epistemology and language. The assignment asked students to apply those concepts to an analysis of a contemporary, real-world issue. Being the dual major that she is, Jessica focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, the ways we have talked about it, and the ways in which language has shaped our response to it.

In another class, (WST 398 with Nancy Hiemstra), Jessica also addressed COVID-19 via a media presentation. As Prof. Hiemstra writes, “For her final project, she put together an original media piece: a photo essay on the impacts of COVID-19 shut-downs and xenophobia on restaurant businesses and undocumented immigrant workers in Manhattan’s Chinatown. She really went above and beyond, taking her own photos to use and writing eloquent, powerful text to accompany them.”

It is rewarding to see that Jessica is using the information and insight from her classes to address real-world issues.

Congratulations to Jessica on her hard work and her academic success.

Professor Nancy Hiemstra presents the award to Jeanette Blanchette:

It is an honor to present this departmental Academic Excellence Award to Jeanette Blanchette, a major in Political Science and minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. Jeanette’s excellence in academics is immediately evident in the fact that she is graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a GPA of 4.00 from Stony Brook’s Honors College. She also exemplifies excellence in her desire to always learn deeply and challenge herself.

I first met Jeanette in 2016 in my Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies course. While it was a lecture course, Jeannette immediately stood out as an especially perceptive and curious student. She was again my student in an upper-level class in 2017, and again excelled. In both classes, she frequently spoke up to make thoughtful comments and consistently turned in outstanding work. Jeanette also demonstrated great skill in independent research and analysis as a research assistant for me over the course of three semesters.

Jeanette similarly impressed other instructors in our department. As Professor Liz Montegary noted, “her work ethic is unmatched, and the quality of her writing is top-notch.” For her WST research seminar project, Jeanette wrote a paper titled “Body Politics: Anti-Abortion Legislation Throughout the Bible Belt.” Jeanette plans to continue on to graduate school in Political Science after graduation, and we look forward to seeing the paths she carves for herself.

Congratulations!