Wells award winner honored

Graduate Kathryn Bryan is the recipient of the Herman B Wells Senior Recognition Award, the highest honor a graduating senior at IU can earn. The religious studies major received the award at her recognition dinner on April 13 where friends, nominators, former recipients, professors and Chancellor Sharon Brehm were present.\nThe award was created to honor former IU president Herman B Wells following his retirement in 1962. Awarded to an outstanding senior each year, the student must fit Well's ideals of academic achievement, as well as service to the community and the University. Bryan had been a Wells Scholar during her time at IU, receiving full tuition and fees, as well as a living stipend for four years of study.\n"She was almost an ideal candidate because she combines intellectual achievement and social action," said James Capshew, associate professor of history and philosophy of science and a member of the award's selection committee. \nAlthough there were over a dozen candidates, Bryan immediately stood out from the lot, Capshew said. \n"Kathryn was at the top of the process," he said. "Therefore it was a fairly uncomplicated decision." \nOne of her four nominators, Richard Miller, professor and chair of the religious studies department, became acquainted with Bryan while working with her on her honors thesis on ethics in irregular war. \n"She gave a lot of thought to pressing issues of the day," he said. "And her thesis was breaking new ground." \nMiller said, "With Kathryn I felt I was learning as much as I was teaching." \nAmong her extensive involvement in religious, social and political studies, Bryan said the most rewarding has been the year she spent abroad in Israel and Palestine with the Friends World Program.\n"I knew I wanted to go abroad, but not to Europe. I wanted a more challenging place, so I chose the Middle East," she said. \nHer time there was split between East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where she attended seminars about their histories, cultures and political conflicts. Bryan also found time to work at two children's centers in different refugee camps as well as a Palestinian women's center. \nAlthough her most transformative experiences were abroad, she is not one to ignore the smaller issues confronting society at home, she said. \n"If you only think about international issues, you might be divorced from the political realities of your own context and community," Bryan said. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Bryan organized a campus-wide escort network at IU Bloomington for Muslim women going to classes.\nBryan's next adventure lies at Oxford University where she will be studying to receive her master's degree in political theory.