Nate Emmerson is winner of a Dean's Distinguished Leadership Award, and also was inducted into Mortar Board and Phi Beta Kappa. A departmental fellow in the classics department, he holds a University Scholarship and a Karl Eschman Memorial Scholarship. He has volunteered with numerous organizations on campus including Bread for the World, Denison International Relief Effort, First Mentors, Habitat for Humanity, Homelessness and Hunger, River Roundup and as a participant in the freshman service project. He was treasurer and vice president of the Denison Community Association cabinet and played with the Heisey Wind Ensemble and the Denison Jazz Ensemble.

Presentation remarks:

"Nate, it is well known among your fellow students that if anyone wants to know how to say something in Latin or Greek, you are the man! As a Phi Beta Kappa scholar you have pursued your passion for the classics in your Young Scholar project and in your senior honors thesis on the comic elements in Petronius' Satyricon. You have served as President of LUDUS, the classics student organization, and as a Fellow in the Classics department. Your faculty mentor says that your attention to research details, your keen literary sensibilities, and your facility of expression are 'impressive for an undergraduate,' and he anticipates the day when you 'become a colleague' and have the opportunity to impart your knowledge and enthusiasm for the classics and for humanistic study upon future generations of students.

"But you clearly have other passions as well, and they are music and social justice. You have played the saxophone in varied music ensembles at Denison, including the Denison Jazz Ensemble and the Heisey Wind Ensemble. You have been a high-profile member of the Denison Community Association, serving as its Vice President and Treasurer, organizing its Conrad Elementary School clothing drive, and participating in Habitat for Humanity, Homelessness and Hunger, the Denison International Relief Effort, Bread for the World, First Mentors, River Round-up.

"You have also been a student staff captain in the Denison Service Orientation trips to Washington, D.C. to work alongside our new students in efforts to help the homeless in that city. All of this service culminated in your receiving the Dean's Leadership Award this year. In light of your breadth and depth of your involvement in the life of the College, what an easy choice that must have been!

"Nate, we appreciate, applaud and celebrate these distinguished achievements during your time at our College."