Lincoln Laureate
A few words of advice given to Lindsay Hansard '15 by her Intro to Psychology instructor continue to resonate with the McKendree senior four years later.
“Chaz Franke ’04 told me the first semester of my first year: ‘Never stop being unapologetically you.’
These words have been ringing in my head for the duration of my undergraduate years,
and I feel I have been living them fully, every day. This advice has led me to Japan,
to Savannah, to Michigan, to Chicago, and to intellectual spaces I never knew I could
enter.”
The English and philosophy major and honor student from Belleville, Ill., is McKendree University’s 2014 Lincoln
Laureate. The Lincoln Academy of Illinois annually recognizes one outstanding college
senior from each institution for excellence in curricular and extracurricular activities.
Lindsay’s wide range of scholarly interests include the ethics of science and technology,
and African-American philosophy. She has synthesized specific areas within the humanities
to
produce outstanding works of scholarship, presenting at several professional conferences
as a result. She has served as a research assistant to Dr. Martha Patterson, professor of English, and during the fall semester conducted independent research
on literary modernism in the Midwest on a fellowship at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Maintaining a 4.0 GPA has earned her membership into three national honor societies,
including Phi Kappa Phi, for academic excellence. She has led several student organizations and in 2013 was
McKendree’s student ambassador to Technos International College in Japan for a two-week
cultural exchange program.
