College of Arts and Sciences
students have distinguished themselves in national, regional and local
competitions this spring – including a Georgia State debate duo that finished
the year ranked 26th in the nation.
Joel Lemuel and Chris Pozzi
earned that ranking from their performance in a year’s worth of debates, The
pair also recently distinguished themselves in national competition, tying for
ninth at the Cross Examination Debate Association national championships.
Lemuel is by far the highest-ranked African-American debater in the country.
“Georgia State
continues to be a national leader in bringing diversity to the debate
community,” said Joe Bellon, director of the debate program.
Georgia State
students also excelled at the National Model United Nations conference, winning
the Outstanding Delegation Award. The group, which represented Nigeria, was
one of five to win the award out of 270 member delegations. And six delegates
from Georgia State won individual Outstanding
Delegate awards: Adam Garvey, Charles Keller, Bhavi Patel, Keta Patel,
Christine Simpson and Carrie Starnes.
A Georgia
State group also won an Outstanding
Delegation Award at the Southeast Regional Model Arab League, where they
represented Syria.
It was the fifth year in a row that the Georgia State
team earned the honor. Also, six members of the team were recognized as
Outstanding Delegates: Laura Halig, Hayat Jomaa, Mira Jabr, Emily Acton, Ashley
Gholamhosseini and Lee Boswell.
History majors also made a
strong showing at the Georgia Undergraduate History Conference, held at the University of Georgia. The conference accepted papers
by eight Georgia State students: Brenton Anderson, Kelly
Whitfield, Kathryn Hudson, Amanda Keith, John Michael Duncan, Michael Holliday,
Gerald Allen and Zaynab A. Abdul-Razacq.
Abdul-Razacq also took home the
top prize for oral presentations at the first annual Georgia State
Undergraduate Research Conference, for her paper titled “Every Day is Ashura,
Every Place is Karbala:
The Politics of Commemoration in Shi’a Islam.” Students from the Arts and
Sciences Honors Program presented 21 of the 57 projects that were on display at
the conference.
“I thought the first Georgia
State Undergraduate Research Conference was an excellent beginning to a
platform for Georgia State University Students to show their work to their
peers,” said Honors Program student Brian Basden. “Also, it will be useful to
prepare students to present at other conferences.”
