F&M Stories

The Williamson Medal is the highest student award presented each year at Franklin & Marshall’s Commencement. It is given to the member of the graduating class who has, during his or her senior year, reached the highest standing in character, leadership and scholarship. The medal was endowed by Owen Moon Jr., in memory of former trustee Henry S. Williamson, and has been presented annually since 1922.

This year, the Williamson Medal is awarded to Roxana “Roxy” Calder.

Roxy is from Philadelphia. She graduates summa cum laude with a major in religious studies and a minor in Middle Eastern area studies. Roxy has examined complex issues in her academic research. Her honors thesis, titled “African American Islam and Secularism,” explores these 20th-century movements as they collide with an American secular imaginary. Other research focused on the 19th-century medical diagnosis of hysteria and its religious and medical contexts, as well as the Quaker prison reform movement of the 1800s. She earned a Marshall Grant in summer 2023 and used it to travel to Beirut, Lebanon, where she researched the intersection of religion, education, and wartime politics at the American University of Beirut.

Roxy is familiar to many on campus as an admission tour guide, welcoming prospective students and their families to campus for the last three years. In 2022, she was a museum and library collections aide, working with faculty from Shadek-Fackenthal Library and the Phillips Museum of Art to organize and catalog large collections. She also was a student preceptor for the “Islam in North America” Connections course, advising and leading classroom discussions with first-year students.

Roxy is active in Alpha Phi Sorority, where she has been the new-member educator and led chapter programming for the last two years. She also is a member of Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society. She has earned several academic honors and awards at Franklin & Marshall, including the Barley Award in Religious Studies, the highest honor for a graduating senior in the department. She also has earned the Kahn Religious Studies Award for best research paper.

Through an F&M course, Roxy has been a student teacher at Lancaster’s McCaskey High School since September. She has been selected by the prestigious Teach For America Corps program, joining more than 120 F&M alumni who have taught in the program over the last three decades. She will spend next year teaching English at a Philadelphia high school.

Roxy, your academic research that deeply examines important moral and religious questions, your outstanding record of scholarship and commitment to intellectual growth, and your personification of the spirit of the liberal arts clearly demonstrate Franklin & Marshall College’s ideal of developing differencemaking graduates of intellect, character and leadership. You represent not only the power of a liberal arts education, but all that makes Franklin & Marshall College such a special place. Congratulations!

Williamson Medalist Roxana Calder, Class of 2024

In 2022, Calder was a museum and library collections aide, working with faculty from Shadek-Fackenthal Library and the Phillips Museum of Art to organize and catalog large collections.

In 2022, Calder was a museum and library collections aide, working with faculty from Shadek-Fackenthal Library and the Phillips Museum of Art to organize and catalog large collections.

In 2022, Calder was a museum and library collections aide, working with faculty from Shadek-Fackenthal Library and the Phillips Museum of Art to organize and catalog large collections.

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