2021 President's Medalist: Maxwell Whitehouse Curtin

Each year, Denison chooses a select few to receive recognition as a President’s Medalist, Denison’s highest student honor. The preeminent criterion for receipt of a President’s Medal, established in 1985, is academic achievement. In addition, candidates must embody some combination of the following: service to the community, contribution to the arts, enlargement of the community’s global perspective, athletic fitness and achievement, leadership ability and contribution to community discourse.

Max Whitehouse Curtin: Global Commerce and Economics double major, and Spanish minor was selected as a 2021 President’s Medalist. His citation reads:

When you are editor-in-chief of the Denisonian you become known all over campus, which can be a mixed blessing at times, responsible for more perspectives than you bargained for at first. But when your professors learn you can help them master balky technology, or simply need someone to help them stop getting in their own way while working with remote learning, you can find yourself more popular than you originally intended. A truly exceptional situation, though, is to be a summer intern in the campus Investment Office, and quickly become seen as indispensable to their work. Your ability to bridge electronic tools to educational goals, while always being a caring and compassionate presence in doing so, has led many faculty and staff to commend you for this award. Innovation and improvisation have been watchwords for us all this past year, but you were developing a reputation for those gifts even before we’d heard of COVID. In Global Commerce, with the Knowlton Center and the Red Frame Lab, your gifts for creating community while pursuing complex inquiries have created for you a place in this year’s President’s Medalist class.