17 inducted into Cum Laude Society; Speaker Jessica Faul ’93 Emphasizes Importance of ‘Feeding Our Brains’
Nine seniors and eight juniors were officially welcomed into the Cum Laude Society at an assembly this morning.
As part of the induction ceremony, Dr. Jessica Faul ’93, an epidemiologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research, spoke to students about how research is finding that our brains are more intertwined with our environment than previously thought.
“Our brains are constantly redefining and rewiring based on how we spend our time in our daily lives,” Faul said. Education is absolutely vital, she emphasized, to not only feeding the brain, but also moving society forward.
“Knowledge, skills and the ability to use them are the currency of the 21st century,” she stated. “Being Greenhills students, you have money in the bank. That rich foundation of knowledge is what what will keep you moving forward. You have it. Bring it every day.”
The newest Cum Laude initiates from the Class of 2012 are Miriam Akervall, Chen Chen, Matthew Fligiel, Sarah Higdon, Alexander Johnson, Sangri Kim, Christopher Owyang, Kathryn Randolph, and Niki Sabetfakhri. These seniors join the following classmates who were inducted last spring: Alina Dunlap, Kamya Jagadish, Grace Judge, Katherine Krauss, Sin Jeong Lee, Grace Mangigian, Katherine Selwa, Marissa Thompson, and Jeffrey Xu.
Members of the Class of 2013 who were inducted include Henry Aspegren, Nadia Azad, Christina Bartson, Chang Che, Jonathan Lazarsfeld, Florence Rivkin, Davis Vorva, and Madison Vorva.
The Cum Laude Society was founded in 1906 by Dr. Abram Harris, director of the Tome School in Maryland, to honor academic excellence at the high school level, much like Phi Beta Kappa does at the collegiate level. The main criterion for student membership is academic excellence and only schools that exemplify a strong commitment and ability to help young people achieve that degree of scholarship are granted charters. It is also hoped that initiates model the three virtues of the motto: honor, justice, and excellence. By-laws of the society state that each chapter is allowed to induct up to 20% of a class total, by the end of the senior year. The first 10% of these may be inducted during the second half of the junior year.
In this, our thirty-second year, we have now inducted a total of 390 students since first becoming a chartered chapter in 1981.
