Students in humanities and arts continue to rack up major honors
A record three UGA students were awarded Schwarzman Scholarships for 2025 and as we have come to expect of students who collect these and other highly competitive international honors, each of them has made the arts and/or humanities a key part of his or her university experience. The recipients are (L-R, above) senior Foundation Fellows Aryan Thakur, majoring in genetics and mathematics, and Amanda Whylie, majoring in entertainment and media studies, and Ramsey Honors Scholar Garrett Williams, a 2022 graduate in economics and finance. The prestigious award will allow them to pursue a one-year master’s degree in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, starting in August 2025.
Whylie is pursuing a minor in Spanish and works closely with faculty in the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute, while Williams graduated with a minor in communication studies. And Thakur is a co-founder of Treehouse Zine, a student-produced art magazine supported in part by the UGA Arts Collaborative.
Earlier in the 2024-25 academic year, Alexandra Catherine Wells, a senior Foundation Fellow and Stamps Scholar majoring in cellular biology and Spanish, was selected as a student representative on the National Humanities Leadership Council. Wells was nominated for a seat on the Council by faculty in the department of Romance languages, and Sharina Maíllo-Pozo, assistant professor of Spanish and Latinx studies, interviewed her about how her study in the humanities informs and augments her parallel work in science and medicine.