Alumni present Yale book awards to outstanding local high school students

The Yale Club of New Haven (YCNH) honored more than 40 talented high school juniors from the New Haven region on Wednesday, Oct. 15 with Yale-Seton Book Awards, carrying on a key tradition for regional Yale alumni groups around the country and overseas.

The Yale Club of New Haven (YCNH) honored more than 40 talented high school students from the New Haven region on Wednesday, Oct. 15 with Yale-Seton Book Awards, carrying on a key tradition for regional Yale alumni groups around the country and overseas.

“The book award program is a solid part of the annual programming for many of our regional Yale groups,” says Nory Babbitt, senior director for clubs and association at the Association of Yale Alumni. “This past year, over 60 clubs, alumni schools committees, and individual sponsors presented over 800 books to worthy high school students.” Babbitt notes, “The book award program helps local alumni be ‘ambassadors for Yale’ and raise Yale’s profile in their home communities and it helps them engage with local schools — and in some cases it helps the students understand that they might, in fact, reach for an Ivy League school.”

The New Haven alumni program welcomes student winners, their parents and families, and high school guidance counselors to campus each fall. Winners and their guests this year enjoyed breakfast and lunch in Davenport College, tours of campus, and conversations with current Yale students from the area and members of the Yale Undergraduate Admissions Office staff.

Marta Elisa Moret ’84 M.P.H., the president of Urban Policy Strategies, a New Haven consulting firm, and the wife of Yale President Peter Salovey ’86 Ph.D., joined the winners this year to offer welcoming remarks. Herself a longtime New Haven resident and active Yale alumni volunteer, Moret told the high schools students that the award is both “a token of our pride in what you have done and a sign of the potential we know you have to do great things in the future.”

Marta Elisa Moret ’84 M.P.H. presented the awards. (Photo by Michael Marsland)

Noting “there are thousands of Yale alumni living and working in New Haven [who] are really committed to both the university and the city,” Moret also saluted the YCNH and its volunteers, including Elaine Piraino-Holevoet ’75.

Moret said that it was appropriate that the awards ceremony was held in Davenport College, as it is named for the founder of the New Haven colony, John Davenport. “New Haven and Yale are on common ground and we work together to build a stronger community,” Moret said. She encouraged all those at the awards ceremony to remember that Yale “is a resource for everyone in the New Haven region” and to celebrate New Haven as a place “with great opportunity and extraordinary assets” — including, especially, its most talented high school students.

The 2014 Seton-Yale Book Award winners and their high schools are:

Academy of Our Lady of Mercy/Lauralton Hall: Megan Hurley

Amistad High School: Shaquana Drury

Amity Regional Sr. High School: Sricharan Kadimi

Ansonia High School: Pablo Suarez

Branford High School: Megan Shea

Cheshire Academy: Stefan Wnuk

Cheshire High School: Cullem Clairmont

Coginchaug Regional High School: Tyler John McDonald

Common Ground High School: Meisha Hennessy

Cooperative Arts & Humanities Magnet: Xavier Sottile

Daniel Hand High School: Christopher Parker

Derby High School: Christopher Diaz

East Hampton High School: Yanyi Lam

East Haven High School: Natalia Wiszniewski

Engineering & Science University Anthony Festa

Guilford High School: Joseph Iassogna

Haddam-Killingworth High School: Cathrina Kothman 

Hamden Hall Country Day School: Josie Maynard

Hamden High School: Julia Lynn

High School: in the Community Alif Panji Firdaus Albiruni

Hill Regional Career High School: Josue Lecodet

Hopkins School: Alexander Burdo

Hyde Leadership School: Dahlia Delahaye

James T. Hillhouse High School: Maya Duff

Jonathan Law High School: Ming-Yeah Hu

Joseph A. Foran High School: Annie Jin

Mercy High School: Allison Wojciechowski

Metropolitan Business School: Utsavi Patel

Middletown High School: Kendar Serindag

Morgan School: Jamie Naccarato

Nathan Hale-Ray High School: Amy Gionta

New Haven Academy: Colasia Claxton

North Branford High School: Maggie Vergati

North Haven High School: Ian O’Connor

Notre Dame High School: Andrew Jefferies

Oxford High School: Margaret Palys

Portland High School: Emilie MacKinnon

Riverside Education Academy Magnet: Corey Maddox

Sacred Heart Academy: Lauren Davis

Seymour High School: Nathan Hom

Shelton High School: Wesley Kocurek

Sound School: Alejandra Corona Prtega

West Haven High School: Alice Obas

Wilbur L. Cross High School: Shannon Foley

Xavier High School: Nicholas J. Indorf

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