Three graduating seniors – Hannah Frederick, Meryl Menezes and Aleksandra Shtabnaya – earned the Darden Award, achieving a perfect GPA of 4.0. Their names were announced via a Zoom call.

It doesn’t take a 4.0 to figure out how to get on a Zoom call.

But three of the participants in a mid-morning call yesterday have 4.0 grade averages, and because they have mastered distance learning during the concluding weeks of their final semester at University of Mary Washington, they and their family members seamlessly accessed Zoom.

The three recipients of the 2020 Colgate W. Darden Jr. Award are Hannah Frederick, a math major with minors in data science and computer science; Meryl Menezes, a psychology major with a minor in Spanish; and Aleksandra Shtabnaya, a computer science major with minors in data science and digital studies.

“Each of our Darden winners completed their studies at UMW with perfect 4.0 grade point averages. All are graduating summa cum laude, and all have been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society,” said Provost Nina Mikhalevsky, who led the virtual presentation that also included deans and faculty members who had worked with the winners. “As a group, the Darden winners took 105 different courses in 23 different subject disciplines and completed six separate individual study or undergraduate projects.”

Mikhalevsky also praised each recipient for “persevering during a pandemic.” Read more.