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������-Dearborn honors a select group of students each semester with the Medallion Award. Chosen by faculty from their respective colleges, graduates are recognized for their outstanding quality of character, intellect, integrity and academic record.

Three Dean’s Medallion awardees are chosen per college — 12 students overall — with one of those students selected to receive the Chancellor’s Medallion. This semester’s Chancellor’s Medallion winner comes from the College of Engineering and Computer Science. These students will be recognized during the April 27 commencement celebrations.

The awardees from the College of Education, Health and Human Services and CECS were featured in a April 11 Reporter article.

Here are the College of Arts, Sciences and Letters and the College of Business recipients.

Dean’s Medallion

Ava Abramowicz
College of Arts, Sciences and Letters

Ava Abramowicz is receiving a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in professional writing and rhetoric, and in journalism and screen studies. She also is earning double minors in film studies and English, and a certificate in writing.

Abramowicz has been involved in numerous extracurricular activities including the Honors Program, Michigan Journal, Campus Video Network, Lyceum: Literary Arts Journal and Phi Sigma Sigma. She’s also an active member of the Michigan Theory Group, associated with the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program at Macomb Correctional Facility. 

Abramowicz excelled in competitions for creative thinkers, winning second place in Honors Writing and receiving an honorable mention in the Bill Linn Fiction Prize at the annual Writing Awards. As a semi-finalist in the 2023 Accenture Innovation Challenge representing ������-Dearborn, Abramowicz contributed to designing educational outreach programs for the Smithsonian Institution. 

Her involvement in the ������-Dearborn Summer Undergraduate Research Experience program enabled her to serve as a production assistant on a documentary shoot in West Virginia, earning her the People’s Choice Award at the 2023 SURE Showcase. Collaborating with Assistant Professor of Journalism and Screen Studies Adam Sekuler, Abramowicz served on a panel about the documentary at the 2024 Pop Conference in Los Angeles. Abramowicz’s professional experience also includes an internship at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where she worked in their Office of International Relations. She was a shadow for season eight of Netflix’s “Big Mouth,” where she listened to table reads and explored the nuances of storytelling in a digital age. 

Post-graduation, Abramowicz will travel to the Canary Islands, focusing on environmental conservation efforts to promote the welfare of dolphins and whales while conducting citizen-science research.

Lydia Fleming
College of Arts, Sciences and Letters

Lydia Fleming is receiving her Bachelor of Arts, with a double major in psychology and in criminology and criminal justice studies.

Fleming is recognized as an outstanding student of the Behavioral Sciences Department and was chosen as the Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies Undergraduate Honors Scholar. She is also a member of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology.

As part of her passion for criminology and psychology, Fleming conducted a study on hiring biases faced by formerly incarcerated job applicants under the guidance of Associate Professor of Psychology Francine Dolins. Fleming also served as vice president and a public relations board member for ������-Dearborn’s Criminology and Criminal Justice Collective. Fleming has interned with the Department of Public Safety on campus and is currently completing her psychology honors thesis, which focuses on implicit and explicit prejudice in racist and anti-fat attitudes. Adding to her research work, Fleming also assisted with Dollins’ study on "Primates in Virtual Space" and with Associate Professor of Psychology Robert Hymes on multiple research projects related to social psychology.

Fleming served as a mental health and peer wellness educator on campus, helping create programs to educate students and address their mental health. This aligns with her work as a group specialist at Camp Starfish, a program for children with behavioral, emotional and learning challenges. Fleming also served as a student advocate for project-based learning at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Collaborative and had a similar role as an Undergraduate Society of Psychology and Neuroscience member.

Fleming is currently applying to graduate programs in forensic and clinical psychology, while working at a trauma therapy clinic that provides evidence-based trauma therapy models to people who have faced adversity.

Asma Jamil
College of Arts, Sciences and Letters

Asma Jamil is receiving a Bachelor of Science in biology with a minor in psychology. Jamil was named the 2024 Biology Honors Scholar, which underscores her commitment and proficiency in her field.

Jamil participated in ������-Dearborn’s Summer Undergraduate Research Experience program, where she studied the effect of seed packaging on fruit dispersal patterns in eastern redbud trees. 

She worked on three research projects under the mentorship of Associate Professor of Biology David Susko. These projects investigated various aspects of the reproduction and dispersal of the redbud tree, and one of these scholarly endeavors yielded a publication in the International Journal