OLIVET, Mich. — Each year, the College celebrates the achievements of students with a number of awards at Honors Convocation. This year, students and faculty members gathered via Zoom to present awards and mark the occasion.
The Leadership in Service Award annually honors a graduating senior who has been an exemplary model of putting the needs of others before themselves. At Olivet College, demonstrating a strong commitment to service and service learning involves a serious and significant amount of time and physical work while often living in challenging conditions. The vast majority of service experiences involve extensive travel in cramped vans over weekends, holidays and Spring Break. While the rewards are many, this work is certainly not for the faint of heart.
Sydnie Weller has been on almost every different type of service trip the College offers over her four years at Olivet. Most recently, she went on the Alternative Spring Break trip to Florida where a group of students replaced hurricane damaged roofs, and most significantly, she went on the College’s first disaster relief trip to Puerto Rico. That two-week trip in May 2018 through All Hands and Hearts Volunteers involved roof repair in rural areas of the island while living in military-style barracks with no air conditioning and no hot water. Not only did Sydnie
work hard, she never complained about our sparse living conditions and made the best of a difficult situation.
In addition to her significant work in service, Sydnie is an excellent student as an insurance and risk management major, and she was also named Risk Management and Insurance Student of the Year. She has completed two successful internships at insurance agencies and earned the University Associate Certified Insurance Counselor (UACIC) professional designation. She also experienced European insurance market operations in London and Dublin, as well as business processes in Antigua during two different study abroad opportunities. Further, Sydnie was a member of Gamma Iota Sigma, the College’s professional insurance and risk management fraternity, where she served as the organization’s vice president of diversity and inclusion.
Sydnie was also a varsity member of the women’s tennis team.
Learn more about Olivet College by contacting the Office of Admissions at 800-456-7189 or admissions@olivetcollege.edu
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