Nota Bene: VWU Welcomes New Batten Honors College Cohort, Board Member

I am pleased to welcome the second cohort of new scholars for our highly selective Batten Honors College. Founded in 2016 with the first class enrolled in 2017, the Batten Honors College has quickly emerged as a national niche program of Virginia Wesleyan University. Our newest full-tuition Batten Fellows have a collective grade point average of 4.21 on a 4.0 scale, an average SAT score of 1340, and an average ACT score of 29. Batten Fellows and Shumadine Scholars will reside in the Honors Village (IV). Sixty-three percent of these students hail from Virginia and over 60 percent indicate an interest in a science discipline at Virginia Wesleyan. We look forward to walking beside them in this journey, and we wish them the very best in their academic pursuits.

New Batten Fellows and Shumadine Scholars:

Batten Fellows
Cassidy Braithwaite            Winchester, VA
Sydney Collins                    Fredericksburg, VA
Brycen Columbus               Concord, NC
Riley Corbin                        Mechanicsville, VA
Benjamin Counsel               Perth, Western Australia
Karlee Fretz                        Green Lane, PA
Emily Geis                          Severna Park, MD
Sophia Gonzales                Virginia Beach, VA
Anitra Howard                     Riverdale, MD
Ebonie Johnson                  Richmond, VA
Teresa Jones                      Fairfax, VA
Destiny Kinka                     Virginia Beach, VA
Kacy McBride                     Virginia Beach, VA
Grant Morgan                     Norfolk, VA
Christopher Morris              Virginia Beach, VA
Katharyn Niedzwiecki         Spotsylvania, VA
Hunter Nordberg                 Apex, NC
Meghan Pease                   Norfolk, VA
Emily Smith                        Forest, VA
Ryan Westpfahl                  Silver Spring, MD
Lindsay White                     Phoenixville, PA
Kathryn Yeager                   Amissville, VA
Hannah Zimmerman           Saint Leonard, MD

Shumadine Scholars
Nathalie Blake                   Charlotte, NC
Jacqueline Carmines         Chesapeake, VA
Katie Costin                       Fountain Inn, SC
Olivia Deane                      Chester, VA
Sarah Farkas                     Virginia Beach, VA
James Harrod                    Lewes, DE
Mackenzie Kerns               Gainesville, VA
Breanna Kokes                  Virginia Beach, VA
Isabel Laxton                     Reston, VA
Justin Lee                          Centreville, VA
Nathaniel Powell                Holly Springs, NC
Dalton Powers                   Chesterfield, VA
Hailey Schumacher            Flanders, NJ
Caroline Tryfiates               Fredericksburg, VA
Emily Uzzle                        Chester, VA
Kathleen VandenBerg        Chesapeake, VA

The Batten Honors College is gratefully named for Virginia Wesleyan Trustee Emerita Jane P. Batten and her late husband, Frank Batten, Sr. For nearly 40 years, Jane has made Virginia Wesleyan a priority in so many different ways, the latest of which is the development of the Batten Honors College. She has been a force for change, improvement, and empowerment, and she believes deeply that students of the highest academic ability will flourish through this innovative program. We are endlessly grateful for her passion for knowledge and her enduring support.

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I am also pleased to announce that Jim Shumadine, co-president of The Employment Guide, has joined Virginia Wesleyan’s Board of Trustees. As many of you know, Jim’s family has longstanding service to the University, starting with his grandmother, Helen Ballard Hoffman, who served on the Board from 1971 until her death in 2010, and continuing with his mother, Trustee Anne Shumadine. We are fortunate to have this family legacy within our Board and look forward to the leadership and strengths Jim will bring to the University.

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Please join me in welcoming our second Batten Honors College cohort and Trustee Jim Shumadine to the Virginia Wesleyan University family.