Alumni Senior Awards 2022
The Grinnell College Alumni Council along with a committee of alumni, faculty, and staff selected two graduating seniors to receive the 2022 Alumni Senior Awards. The awards honor graduating seniors who best exemplify the Grinnell College spirit and to whom the class will continue to look for leadership as they become the newest members of the alumni community. Seniors were nominated for the award by their class of 2022 peers.
This year, Maya Larson ’22 and Linh Tang ’22 were presented with Alumni Senior Awards at Baccalaureate on May 22 by Alumni Council member Becky Reetz Neal ’65. Below is more information about the recipients.
Maya Larson
Maya Larson has demonstrated leadership and service to Grinnell College through her excellent work in the classroom and with the office of Accessibility and Disability Services. She has strengthened programs and tools to benefit students with disabilities and promoted the visibility of disability on campus.
Larson has Usher syndrome, which leads to a severe loss of hearing and sight. She has publicly talked about her disability and wrote several compelling pieces about it for her English classes.
“The pieces were exquisitely written and remarkable for their candor and for the way they adopt a disability-rights perspective,” says English professor Ralph Savarese. “I marveled at how Maya negotiated the competing demands of art and advocacy.”
A Minneapolis native, Larson is double majoring in English and French. She is engaged and passionate about the culture and literature of French-speaking countries. She attended the French Table weekly, and her presence was always warm and welcoming.
“I feel so fortunate to have witnessed such resiliency in a student as she inspires me daily,” says Gwenola Caradec, an associate French professor.
Linh Tang
A computer science major from Vietnam, she has been a research assistant for several professors. After working on a Mentored Independent Project her first summer at Grinnell, she published a paper at The Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference. While later presenting her remarkable work at the Consortium for Computing Sciences in College Midwest, Tang was awarded the Best Student Research Award. She also won first place in the 2019 Pioneer Weekend pitch competition.
Tang has served as both a mentor and grader for many Grinnell classes. She joined two classmates in taking the initiative to hold a series of workshops for fellow computer science students to help the with job searching, resume review, and mock interviews.
Working as a Multicultural Leadership Committee ambassador for Student Affairs for the last three years, Tang assisted with training for all multicultural organizations. She also has served as vice president of the Vietnamese Student Association – holding multiple events to represent Vietnamese students and their culture on campus – and was vice chair of the Association for Computing Machinery Grinnell College chapter.
Previous Recipients