Chambliss Student Academic Achievement Awards 2025

Chambliss Student Academic Achievement Awards 2025

April 07, 2025

L to R: Samantha Graf, Sarah Snow, Evan Curtin, Cheyenne Friscia, Karleigh Patton, Emma Blomiley, Bridget Curtis, Linda Zúñiga (Not Pictured: Jarline Herrera)

KUTZTOWN, Pa. - Kutztown University presented the Chambliss Student Academic Achievement Awards to nine accomplished students Friday, April 4. Students who received awards were nominated by staff and faculty members for meeting one or more of the seven areas of achievement: successfully completed research projects, outstanding academic achievement, high-quality original artwork, high-quality artistic performances (music, chorus, drama, etc.), original writing in literature or meritorious writing in other fields, noteworthy achievements in athletics, and outstanding service to the KU community.

The Academic Achievement Awards were established in 2004 through a donation provided by Dr. Carlson Chambliss, KU professor of astronomy from 1970-2003. The purpose of the awards is to recognize the exceptional individual achievements of a select group of KU graduating seniors. Specially designed coin medallions of gold, silver and copper were presented to the students.

Emma Blomiley - Gold

Emma Blomiley is a communication design major graduating in May from Cochranville, Pa. She was awarded the Chambliss Academic Gold Medal for original artwork of high quality. Blomiley is an exceptionally talented student specializing in illustration and interactive design and consistently demonstrates skills far beyond her years. She began serving as the communication design program's social media specialist as a sophomore, when she created graphics for nearly two years. She then took on the role as brand specialist for the Small Business Development Center. Her work has earned her several prestigious national awards and demonstrates creativity and dedication.

Her creative work has been recognized through various platforms, including being featured in American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) Philadelphia: Honorable Mention Illustration Category; and the American Advertising Federation (AAF) Greater Lehigh Valley ADDY Awards: Silver Regional ADDY for UI/UX Design. Her work has also been awarded at UCO Salute Design Competition (Edmond, Okla.): Best in Illustration Award and Merit Award in Interactive/ Motion Category and MSU Glitch Exhibition (Mississippi State, Miss.): Second Runner-Up, Illustration. This spring she was awarded Regional Gold American Advertising Award, 2025- Elements of Advertising: Illustration, Regional Silver American Advertsing Award, 2025- Cross-Platform Integrated Campaign, MSU Glitch Competition, 2025- First Runner-Up in Advertising, and AIGA FLUX National Design Competition- UI/UX Category Finalist and Publication Category Finalist. Work of hers will be featured in the Blood, Sweat and Illustration Exhibition in the Sharadin Gallery Lobby this spring. Blomiley's work will hopefully lead to illustrating children's books. Her recent graphic novel, "The Night Witches," demonstrates her ability to combine historical research and illustration. Her work on the Critter Compass app showcased her abilities with user-centered design. Her hope is to find a job where she can balance her two passions (illustration and interactive) in an inspiring work environment.

Samantha Graf - Gold

Samantha Graf is a biology allied health major graduating in May from Wayne, N.J. She was awarded the Chambliss Academic Gold Medal for noteworthy achievements in athletics. Graf is one of the most transformative lacrosse players in Kutztown University program history. She is a two-time All-American, including First Team honors as a junior in 2024, along with a two-time all-region and three-time All-Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) selection. She is KU's career record holder in goals, points and draw controls, while also holding single season records for points, goals and draw controls.

Graf joined the program in 2022 and scored 42 goals, 21 assists and 63 points during her freshman season, placing her third in program history for points in a season. In 2023, KU went 13-6 with its first-ever PSAC Championship Tournament appearance and reached the championship game in 2024. Since Graf joined the team, KU has made its first NCAA Tournament appearances in program history in 2023 and 2024. She was selected as the 2025 Preseason Midfielder of the Year by USA Lacrosse Magazine. Graf is interested in pursuing a career in the health profession as a physician's assistant.

Bridget Curtis - Silver

Bridget Curtis is a marketing major with a social media theory and strategy minor graduating in May from Warrington, Pa. She was awarded the Chambliss Academic Silver Medal for noteworthy achievements in athletics. Curtis is one of the top women's soccer players in program history and has been an exemplary student as well. She has received multiple national accolades for her athletic and academic achievements over the course of her KU career. She is a two-time United Soccer Coaches All-American, earning First Team Honors in 2023. She is a four-time All-PSAC defender and was voted the 2023 PSAC East Defensive Athlete of the Year. Curtis is also a three-time D2CCA and United Soccer Coaches All-Atlantic Region First Team selection. She's one of only three players in program history to earn multiple All-America honors.

In 83 career games, Curtis made 82 starts on defense. She registered nine goals and three assists for 21 points. She was a team captain and helped Kutztown reach the NCAA Division II Championship tournament in each of her four seasons with the program. Academically, Curtis was named a College Sports Communications Third Team Academic All-American in 2023 and is a two-time College Sports Communicators Academic All-District honoree. She is also a three-time PSAC Scholar-Athlete and two-time D2ADA Academic Achievement Award recipient.

Karleigh Patton - Silver

Karleigh Patton is a communication design major graduating in May from Reading, Pa. She received the Chambliss Academic Silver Medal for outstanding service to the Kutztown University community. Patton has a passion for volunteering and serving the university community. She has dedicated significant time and effort to assisting with department, college, and university initiatives, along with contributing to the greater Reading and Berks County community.

For the communication design department, Patton would support recruitment efforts including their annual Design Day Camp, where she volunteered on Saturdays to assist with workshops, spoke to prospective students and oversaw activities. She contributed to the KU community by playing a leadership role in the 16th Annual Designathon in 2024 as a student assistant, including planner and design team leader. Her team created logos and branding for Generation Impact, a VOiCEup Berks initiative for 18- to 24-year-old volunteers, which complements her other work in the greater Berks community. She serves as president of the Textile and Weaving Club, where she works with her fellow Executive Board members to run demo nights, maintain a club budget and share communications. She also organized a Thrift Night and Art Market fundraiser, which collected gently used clothing that students could buy as well as promote student artists to sell their work. She served as secretary of the student body from 2021-23. Some of her philanthropic efforts for the Reading Community include co-founding an internationally recognized youth movement, Stand Together Against Racism (STAR) through Youth Volunteer Corps of Reading. Her contributions to the leadership for STAR are website designer, logo designer, discussion leader, curriculum developer, program leader and event planner. She is a member of the Youth Volunteer Corps of Reading Alumni Network and VOiCEup Berks. She was a founding member of Generation Impact and is a board member of the YVC Reading/VOiCEup Berks Alumni Council. Patton's future goal is to combine her passion for helping others and creative skills to become a lead designer or creative director for a nonprofit.

Evan Curtin - Copper

Evan Curtin is a physics and astronomy major graduating in May from Douglassville, Pa. He was awarded the Chambliss Academic Copper Medal for successfully completed research project. Curtin served as a research assistant in a program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he learned to use KU's C.R. Chambliss Astronomical Observatory to perform follow-up observations for NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) exoplanet discovery mission. He helped to retire several TESS planet candidates as "false positives," and he also confirmed the exoplanet transit signals of several other TESS candidates, elevating them to the disposition of "confirmed planet candidate" within the TESS Follow-up Observing program (TFOP). He then traveled to Australia for a 10-week paid research assistantship working with the MINERVA-Australis observatory and the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ). At UniSQ, he was invited to lead a project that used the latest stellar atmosphere modeling codes, in combination with a chi-square minimization approach, to fit physical stellar parameters to observed stellar spectra. Since its commissioning in 2019, MINERA-Australis had recorded high-resolution spectra of hundreds of exoplanet-candidate host stars for the primary purpose of measuring the radical velocity variations of the stars and therefore the masses of the potential exoplanets. His project was to generate a catalog of those spectra and of the best-fit stellar properties (mass, temperature, surface gravity, age, rotation rate, etc.) of the stars. This project is extremely valuable for any future researchers wishing to study those stars or more importantly, to characterize any new exoplanets discovered to be orbiting them.

Curtin's work was accepted for presentation at the nation's premiere astronomy conference and a research paper related to one of the target stars is currently being prepared for peer-review, where he will be named a co-author in collaboration with the UniSQ team. His future goal is to earn a graduate degree and eventually have a career in a field of science related to astronomy.

Cheyenne Friscia - Copper

Cheyenne Friscia is a biology major graduating in May from Kutztown, Pa. She was awarded the Chambliss Academic Copper Medal for successfully completed research project and outstanding service to the Kutztown University community. Friscia has made important contributions to ornithology through her research project. She conducted an independent project while working as a field assistant to help band birds for a songbird research project in 2023. She developed a methodology to quantify feather mite prevalence and abundance on all birds to determine whether the abundance of mites had any influence on the body condition in the focal species. She learned how to use the Scanning Electron Microscope that she was able to produce stunning photographs of the mites on. Her research found that feather mites were present on 90 percent of the 26 bird species sampled and relatively abundant on infested birds. Her research confirmed what few other studies have found in different species of birds. She presented her research at a regional ecological conference.

Friscia has an extensive record of service and leadership. Her freshman spring break, she spent with Habitat for Humanity building houses. Once she became a biology major, she joined the Ornithology Club, where she served as club president last year. She led the club to gain Maroon status and apply for Gold Status, which was approved last fall. Since 2022, she has served as a student representative to the Environmental Advisory Commission for the borough of Kutztown. In 2023, she participated in a Department of Business Sustainability Panel. She is a dean's list student, received the Tibbits and Watrous Science Scholarship and CLAS Stand-Out Student award. Her future goal is to work as a field ornithologist at a federal agency, such as a national park.

Jarline Herrera - Copper

Jarline Herrera is from Philadelphia and graduated in December with degrees in political science and history. She was awarded the Chambliss Academic Copper Medal for successfully completed research project. Herrera worked in KU's Department of Political Science, assisting in organizing and analyzing many primary documents collected in Africa for of a national endowment for the humanities. During this time, her interest for Afro-Dominican history was sparked and led her to a grant in 2024 to spend spring break in New York City doing research at the Dominican Institute at CUNY in Manhattan. During this time, she spent three days reading and copying primary documents.

In the fall of 2024, she presented a paper at Lycoming College titled "Mama Tinga and the History of Afro-Dominican Women," and at Rowan University for "The African in the Closet: Afro-Dominican History from 1492 to 1975." As an Afro-Dominican, she wants to continue her research on the role of Afro-Dominican people in Dominican history. In the summer of 2023, she was selected as a Kutztown Phenomenal woman and has also received an undergraduate research award to study at the Dominican Institute in New York. She is in the process of getting her article published and as an Afro-Dominican, her work is an important contribution to the debate on race occurring in the Dominican Republic. Herrera is planning on attending graduate school.

Sarah Snow - Copper

Sarah Snow is a political science and geography major graduating in May from Beach Lake, Pa. She was awarded the Chambliss Academic Copper Medal for successfully completed research project. Snow had a poster presentation at the American Association of Geographers conference in Hawaii in 2024. This paper was co-authored with Dr. Moira Conway, geography. An adjacent paper created for her Honors capstone was presented at the Pennsylvania Political Science Association conference in spring of 2024. A revised version was then presented at the Southern Political Science Association in San Juan in January 2025.

Snow is a member of the Kutztown Honors Society, the National Society of Leadership and Success Member, a dean's list student, recipient of the Richard B. Close Award in Policial Science and the Joseph Peters and Albert Dixon Memorial Award in Political Science. Snow is currently applying to graduate programs in both political science and geography.

Linda Zúñiga - Copper

Linda Zúñiga is an anthropology and art history major graduating in May from Collingdale, Pa. She was awarded the Chambliss Academic Copper Medal for successfully completed research projects. During the summer of 2023, Zúñiga participated in fieldwork conducted by the Kutztown University Archaeology Field School (KUAFS) at Stoddartsville. This project explores the myriad changes in work and domestic life wrought by industrialization. Zúñiga worked with a small crew to locate structures associated with a grist mill. Using a combination of aerial photography, close interval pedestrian survey and shovel tests, Zúñiga's crew was able to locate a structure related to the mill that has been long since swallowed by encroaching vegetation. She has also worked in the archaeology lab at KU to clean, sort, catalogue and analyze the artifacts. This is where she began her analysis comparing the attributes of hand-made nails and machine-cut hand-headed nails. Through her analysis of nails, she has shed light on a seemingly mundane, but important activity engaged in by the Stoddartsville blacksmith(s) cast against the backdrop of a changing community and economy.

Zúñiga was awarded Best Student Poster at the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference in Spring 2024, along with the Stand-Out Student for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Fall 2024. She plans on attending graduate school to gain further training in forensic anthropology and archaeology, applying her training to the study of skeletal remains from both archeological sites and contemporary forensic settings.