Ashburn resident Jiin Jeong Receives Top Prize at Hamilton College Class & Charter Day
Clinton, NY (05/14/2021) — Ashburn resident and Hamilton College senior Jiin Jeong received a top prize at Hamilton's Class & Charter Day awards ceremony on May 11. Jeong was awarded the James Soper-Merrill Prize, given to the member of the graduating class "who, in character and influence, has typified the highest ideals of the College." The winner is selected by the faculty and speaks at Commencement.
Jeong, a computer science and economics major, was called "a leader in and fierce advocate for inclusion in CS education" by a nominator. "Jiin's a renaissance woman - a theme central to everyone who knows her. She approaches opportunities to create, lead, teach, and collaborate with uncommon zeal.
"Jiin is a leader in her generation, and her engagement/involvement at Hamilton is felt all over campus and combines her commitment to cultural awareness and diversity and inclusion, fascination with the CS education boom and inequities and love of music with her heart and soul. Jiin beautifully typifies the ideals of the College."
One nominator called her "a model of the liberal arts spirit at its best, and our campus community is greatly enriched by all her many contributions these last four years."
In March, Jeong received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for her project Recoding Literacy: Exploring the Computer Science Education Boom, and will travel to Kenya, Singapore, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates.
She served as Coding Club president and last year created Summer of Code, a virtual 12-week project for first- and second-year students with limited computer science experience from Hamilton, Skidmore, and Williams that focused on game development, web development, and start-up pitch. Jeong has interned at General Electric, Goldman Sachs, and Triangle Privacy Research Hub (N.C.), and did computer science research at Harvey Mudd College. Last year she received the Fillius Drown Scholarship, the top award for juniors.
Originally founded in 1793 as the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, Hamilton College offers an open curriculum that gives students the freedom to shape their own liberal arts education within a research- and writing-intensive framework. Hamilton enrolls 1,850 students from 49 states and 49 countries. Additional information about the college can be found at www.hamilton.edu.
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Ashburn resident and Hamilton College senior Jiin Jeong photo by Nancy L. Ford