The Ohio State University Board of Trustees honored two Arts and Sciences undergraduates with the Student Recognition Award at their February meeting. Students are selected based on outstanding academic and research performance, leadership in promoting diversity, and commitment to university and community service. Students are nominated by the deans of their division.

Patrick Burns, from Dayton, Ohio, is a senior honors student, majoring in geological sciences. In addition to superior classroom scholarship, Pat is conducting an innovative research project trying to match changes in stream geochemistry to variations in land use and land type in a high-elevation watershed in Peru. He won first place in the Math and Physical Sciences category at last year’s Denman Undergraduate Research Forum; that work will serve as the basis for his honors thesis. In the summer of 2009, Pat won a competitive School of Earth Sciences’ Shell Undergraduate Research Experience Internship. He has received numerous honors and awards and is a member of Phi Kappa Phi and Sigma Gamma Epsilon Earth Sciences’ Honorary Society. He served as an intern at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Geological Survey, volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, and serves as an elementary school tutor. Pat will graduate with Honors and Distinction in the spring.

Rachel O’Connor, from Painesville, Ohio, is a senior honors student, majoring in psychology and criminology with a minor in sexuality studies. Rachel completed her honors thesis during her junior year (one year early) on the relationship between social motivations and in-group bias. Her work has important implications for eyewitness memory, where in-group bias can lead to the conviction of an innocent person. In January, Rachel presented her research at the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology; her work has been recognized as the Best Undergraduate Research Poster by the Ohio Psychological Association. Rachel is a member of the Psi Chi National Honorary in Psychology. In addition to her research accomplishments, Rachel has maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA while juggling a challenging honors curriculum. She applies her passion for social issues to her extracurricular activities; which include volunteering for the Girls’ Circle, the Social Issues Immersion Project, working as an intern at the Community Shelter Board, and Ohio State’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Rachel will graduate in March with Honors and Distinction.