Grand Valley State University students, faculty and staff gathered on Monday, April 6 at the Eberhard Center for the annual Student Awards Convocation.

The ceremony honored GVSU graduate and undergraduate students, as well as faculty, for various academic and leadership achievements, and 112 students received the “excellence-in-a-discipline award,” which honors one undergraduate and one graduate student from each discipline.

Faculty members from each department selected the winners. The student must earn a minimum number of credit hours and do so with an exceptional grade point average.

Gayle Davis, GVSU provost and vice president of academic affairs, said it is important to recognize how much time students put into their work.

“It is a true honor to hear about (students’) achievements, their leadership opportunities, their contributions to the campus community in general,” Davis said.

The awards celebrated more than academic achievement. Andrew Plague, Student Senate president, received the Kenneth R. Venderbush Leadership Award. This award recognizes a GVSU senior who demonstrates effective leadership skills and academic excellence in political science.

Two undergraduate students, two graduate students and three faculty members received the Glenn A. Niemeyer Award. Davis said the Niemeyer award is the most prestigious academic honor presented to students and faculty. Niemeyer was present for the presentation of the award.

Student recipients must show an excellence in the classroom and extra-curricular activities, as well as demonstrate joy of learning in a community of scholars. Faculty recipients were honored for their loyalty to teaching and having a student-centered approach.

Undergraduate students Abigail DeHart and Justin Ebert, graduate students Julie Bulson and Gabriel Kalmbacher and faculty members Craig Benjamin, Rebecca Davis and Linda McCrea received the Niemeyer Award.

Nine students received the Thomas M. Seykora award, which recognizes GVSU seniors who have contributed to the campus community.

Mark Schaub, chief international officer and executive director of the Barbara H. Padnos International Center, encouraged students to become global citizens. During his keynote address, Schaub spoke on the importance of not just learning about other cultures, but living in other cultures.

Students come to GVSU from all over the world, Schaub said, so it is important to make GVSU a place worth going to. He argued that the world lives in each place: every town, city or country has something unique.

“Every place is a global place,” Schaub said. “Yet, to appreciate that, to imagine the worldliness of any particular place, one really needs to experience other places and the people that inhabit them.”

He said the students and faculty that come and go from GVSU make it a global place. Multitudes of nationalities have called campus home, and many individuals continue to call it home.

“Here’s how going to another place transforms a person,” Schaub said. “It’s not the place that does it; it’s the people in that place.”

He said many of the students that were being honored were already on their way to becoming global citizens. However, he encouraged everyone to look for new, special places that they can help enrich. 

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