The Classics department is pleased to announce the 2019-20 winners of the Aldrich and Civitas Awards:
The winner of the Aldrich Award for Graduate Studies is Olga Faccani. During the 2019-20 academic year, Olga has made excellent progress towards completion of the degree: she has presented to the department her significant paper – titled Philia, Trauma, and the Self: Renewal of Friendship in Euripides’ “Heracles” – and passed her oral qualifying examination. Moreover, since the summer of 2019 she has been collaborating with The Odyssey Project, a theater process between youth from a juvenile detention facility in Santa Barbara county and UC undergraduate students. She has discussed this experience in a “lightning round” talk at the most recent meeting of the Social for Classical Studies in Washington, DC.
The winner of the Aldrich Award for Undergraduate Studies is Donna Blockhus. Donna, who has been invited to join the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa society, has excelled in all the classes she has taken during her undergraduate career – be they language courses, larger lectures, or more intimate seminars. She has also made a significant contribution to the life of the department by acting as librarian of the Keith Aldrich Memorial Library.
The winner of the Civitas Award is Kalina Kazmierczak. With her enthusiasm and passion for the ancient world, Kalina has been an invigorating member of our undergraduate community: she has coordinated several meetings and activities of the Classics Club, and revived the Language Cafe, which provides students with a casual setting for working on their study of Ancient Greek and Latin.
Congratulations to all of them!