Awards ceremony recognizes Elon Law student achievement

Law school faculty and administrators hosted a May 3 program to honor students for their outstanding academic performances.

The Elon Law community renewed a tradition this week when it hosted the Strongest Comprehensive Performance Award Ceremony during a midday gathering of students, faculty and staff in the school’s upstairs commons.

Awards are given to students in required classes who, in the view of the faculty member teaching the course, demonstrated the strongest performance in that section of the class.

Led by Associate Dean Enrique Armijo and Dean Luke Bierman, the program individually recognized those Elon Law students from the 2017 Winter Trimester, with digital displays throughout the building listing those students in required courses held each term since Fall 2014.

2017 Winter Trimester student honors went to:

  • Rachel Zielinski (Business Associations | Molony)
  • Danielle Hardy (Civil Procedure II | Fink)
  • Helen Tsiolkas (Civil Procedure II | Perkins)
  • Sarah Rozek (Civil Procedure II | Perkins) and (Contracts II | Levine)
  • Jesse Peterson (Contracts II | Johnson)
  • Theodore West (Contracts II | Johnson)
  • Christian Haverstrom  (Criminal Law | Friedland)
  • Jordan Hensley (Criminal Law | Friedland)
  • McKenzie Canty (Criminal Law | Friedland) and (Legal Method & Communication II | Noble)
  • Nicholas Patrick (Evidence | Dunham)
  • Alishia Tidwell (Legal Method & Communication II | Wasson)
  • Jeremy Boissy (Legal Method & Communication II | McFarlin)
  • Lindsey Rhoten (Legal Method & Communication II | Engstrom)
  • Rebecca Kilmon (Legal Method & Communication II | Atkins)
  • Catherine Bryant (Legal Method & Communication II | Flood)

Armijo concluded the program with a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt.

“’Comparison is the thief of joy,'” Armijo said. “The joy that those being recognized today feel is not just, or even mostly, because they won an award in a contest called a law school class, in which they were compared to others. It’s because they achieved a goal—they fulfilled a commitment to themselves to do their very best, every single day.

“That’s the difference between an award and a goal. An award is something someone else, like a professor, or a boss, decides to give you, based on the things they value. A goal is something you give yourself, that no one else can take away, that’s based on the things that you value. So let’s all leave here inspired to set new goals, and to have no regrets in the end about what we did or didn’t do to try to meet them.”