Truitt Center Reconciliation Award

This award is presented to a student who best exemplifies the vision of Douglas G. Noiles and Edna Truitt Noiles ’44, who endowed the program in the Vera Richardson Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life “to enable Elon students to learn about their own and other faiths and to live lives of reconciliation.”

Presented by Joel Harter, Associate University Chaplain & Director of the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life

Transcript of Commendations

Joel Harter, Associate University Chaplain & Director of the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life

It is an honor and a privilege to present this year’s Truitt Center Reconciliation Award to Caroline Penfield. Caroline wonderfully exemplifies Edna Truitt Noiles’ founding vision for the Truitt Center to enable members of the Elon community to “learn about their own and other faiths, and to live lives of reconciliation.”

Almost from her first day on campus, Caroline connected with the Truitt Center, and her first year, she developed a new interfaith dialogue program as our first Better Together Coordinator. Caroline served as an interfaith engagement intern her second and third years, co-directed the Ripple Interfaith Conference as a sophomore, and then solo directed Ripple this year. She did an amazing job, recruiting, leading, and supporting a team of student leaders. This year Caroline used the Pickett Leadership Grant to recruit student leaders from partnering colleges and universities to diversify our student leadership team and to completely (and successfully) reimagine the Ripple Conference in a virtual format with the theme “Intersectional Interfaith.”

I really cannot praise Caroline enough for her servant leadership, intellectual curiosity, creative energy, and her ability to make others feel seen, heard, and valued. Everyone who encounters Caroline experiences her welcoming generosity. Well, let’s be honest. First, they learn she’s from Birmingham, Alabama, and then, they encounter her authentic openness to know and accept them, even if they are Auburn fans.

In her three years with the Truitt Center, Caroline has done a great job building relationships with students from different religious, spiritual, and secular traditions and different parts of campus. Personally, I have been impressed and challenged by Caroline’s determination to become more aware of her privilege, to step out of her comfort zone, and to create space for marginalized voices and intersectional identities. Caroline uses her leadership to empower others and to create space for more authentic cross-cultural and multifaith learning.

For all these reasons, and many more, it is my honor to present the Truitt Center Reconciliation Award to Caroline Penfield.