On Friday May 10, 2019, the Department of Philosophy was pleased to celebrate Commencement with its graduating students, friends, and families. We honor the following 59 philosophy majors who graduated in Spring 2019 with a BA in Philosophy for their passion for philosophy, their undergraduate accomplishments, and their hard work:
- Haley Abramson
- Maia Allen
- Ali Almarhoon
- Katharine Beltrami
- Jesse Bergquist
- Damian Borovsky
- Jackson Borum
- Wesley Bradford
- McCoy Bradley
- Christian Bruno
- Brendan Bunker
- Sarah Burnell
- Andrew Card
- Janelle Chapman ("Synesthesia as an Intervention to Modify Children's Access to Enhanced Learning and Memory" (advisor: Brian Talbot), cum laude)
- Luke Charlton
- Xiang Chen
- James Cohen @
- David Conner
- Kaylyn Czarnecki
- Joel Duran ("A Swerve from Freedom: An Analysis of Epicurean par'hemas and Its Impact on Free Will", advisor: Garrett Bredeson, cum laude)
- cum laude)
- Marlee Durand
- Dean Eyolfson
- Andrew Ghizzone
- Skyler Gironda
- Noah Hamann
- Robert Heiberger
- Kyle Houseworth
- Dylan Kayyem
- Alix Knight
- Oren Kreps* ("The Anthropic Principle and Multiple Universe Hypotheses", (advisor: Heather Demarest), cum laude)
- Charles Lavezzi
- Russell Leonard ("The Three Moral Questions", (advisor: Garrett Bredeson), cum laude)
- Conor Lutgen*("Moral Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness and the Free Will Debate" (advisor: Matthias Steup), magna cum laude)
- John Manning*@
- Liam Mazzara
- Rachel McClure
- Matthew McDonald
- Ross McNearney@ ("Beyond "Good Behaviour": Plan to Restructure the Supreme Court of the United States", Advisor: Ajume Wingo, cum laude)
- Blake Miller
- Jordan Moore
- Rebecca Mullen* ("Developing a Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harming by Omission", Advisor: Chris Heathwood, summa cum laude)
- summa cum laude)
- Chandler Padilla
- Maxwell Passas*
- Dominic Pontious*
- Justin Richards
- Jonathan Rieger
- Lauren Rosenthal*@ ("How Anti-Aggregation is a Viable and Sensible Perspective to Maintain and Align with the Endeavour of Saving the Lives of People Suffering Around the World", Advisor: Brian Talbot, magna cum laude)
- Gianna Rossi
- Elizabeth Rothrock
- Tage Rustgi
- Connor Scroggins
- Nicholas Shapiro
- Samantha Sherron
- Grey Shipman*@
- Isaac Singer
- Matthew Tuerk
- Allison Van Court
- Alex Vrabely ("30 Strikes for Nietzsche: Zen and the Overman" (advisor: Andrew Chapman), summa cum laude)
- Brandon Waddle
*with Distinction (GPA 3.75 and above)
@ graduated with Phi Beta Kappa
Cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude: awarded to students whose GPA qualified for Latin honors and who wrote an honors thesis, which was awarded either 'cum laude' (with honors) 'magna cum laude' (with high honors), or 'summa cum laude' ('with highest honors).
Three graduate students were awarded their Doctorate of Philosophy:
- Cheryl Abbate, "The Hard Problems of Animal Rights" (advisor: Alastair Norcross)
- Daniel Coren, "Aristotle on Animal Self-Motion" (advisor: Mitzi Lee)
- Benjamin Kultgen, "Vagueness and Ethics" (advisor: Graham Oddie)
Lorenzo Nericcio graduated with a Master of Arts in Philosophy. He wrote a thesis on "Consequential Principles Concerning the Morality of Geoengineering" with Alastair Norcross.
The Department awarded the following prizes:
Alex Wolf-Root (PhD candidate) won the Jentzsch Prize for his paper "Pre-Game Cheating and Playing the Game". The Jentzsch Prize is given in memory of Gus Jentzsch, who was a PhD student in philosophy at CU in the late 1960s and died young of Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He was regarded by the faculty as a superb and gifted philosopher. Jentzsch chose to spend his last summer doing philosophy with his advisor Prof. Jim Kimble rather than go on holiday with his girlfriend. After he died, friends and faculty members endowed a fund to honor his memory. Every spring we have a contest with submissions by graduate students, and the winner is given the Jentzsch prize for best graduate student paper of the year. It is meant to recognize sound scholarship and original thinking in philosophy.
Alex Wolf-Root has also won the 2019 Stahl Prize (which recognizes a graduate student who has made a significant contribution toward bringing the discipline of philosophy to bear on some demanding and crucial human problem). Alex is being recognized for his work on economic rights and justice issues both in the context of graduate student employment and in the context of college athletics.
Sam Director (PhD candidate) was awarded the Mills Teaching Award, which is given to the Best TA of the year.
Caleb Pickard (PhD candidate) was awarded the Morriston Teaching Award, which is given to the Best GPTI of the year.
Two PhD students - Zak Kopeikin and Lisa Thomas-Smith - were awarded University-wide Graduate School Teaching Excellence Awards.
Kelly Dinneen won the Undergraduate History of Philosophy Award, for best paper in the history of philosophy by an undergraduate. She wrote a paper "Freedom and Affection: Metaphysical and Moral Grounds for Duns Scotus' Libertarianism".
Grey Shipman won the Socrates Award, which is awarded each year at Spring Commencement to the undergraduate philosophy major with the highest overall GPA.
Alison Weinberger won the Morris Judd Scholarship ($2000 awarded in the spring for continuing students). The Morris Judd Scholarship is named after Morris Judd, who in the early 1950s was a faculty member in CU Boulder's Philosophy Department. Although he was an outstanding teacher, his appointment was terminated when he and 50 other faculty members, staff, and students were investigated for alleged ties to the Communist Party.
Undergrad Rebecca Mullen has won the 2019 Morris Judd Undergraduate Essay Prize (awarded to the best undergraduate essay submitted on any topic in the values area) for her essay "The Moral Access Problem and Identifying Moral Expertise."
Peter Saint-André delivered the Graduation Address to the graduating seniors and graduate students. Peter Saint-Andre double-majored in Philosophy and Classics, graduating from Columbia University in 1989. While at Columbia he was an NEH Younger Scholar but decided to pursue a career in the business world. For the past 25 years he has helped to build some of the core technologies of the Internet both at large companies like Cisco and as a Chief Technology Officer for several startups. He is now a Principal Engineer at Mozilla, the makers of the Firefox web browser. He has also published books on philosophers such as Nietzsche, Thoreau, and Epicurus, and is currently writing an epitome of Aristotle's ethics.