The annual Academic Excellence Convocation was held in the Culp Center Tuesday to present approximately 350 awards to outstanding students here at ETSU.
The Faculty Awards were given to the top 35 students, in addition to all graduating students achieving a 3.5 to 4.0 GPA, indicating honor, cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude academic standings.
The program also took time to honor prestigious graduating students involved in the ETSU University Honors Scholars Program.
The Academic Honors Convocation’s featured speaker was Dr. Niall Shanks, professor of philosophy and humanities and adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at ETSU.
In 1998, Shanks received the university’s Distinguished Faculty Award in Research.
Originally from England, Shanks specializes in the philosophy of science (evolutionary biology, biomedicine and physics) and bioethics.
Along with Dr. Hugh Lafollette, ETSU professor of philosophy and humanities, Shanks co-wrote the book Brute Science: The Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation.
He is also editor of the anthology, Idealization in Contemporary Physics, and co-editor, with Dr. Robert Gardner of the ETSU department of mathematics, of the anthology, Logic, Probability and Science.
Currently, Shanks is working on a second book, Animals in the Light of Science, a philosophical history of the development of our understanding of human and nonhuman animals and their relative places in nature in the light of 300 years of modern science.
Dr. Bert Bach, provost and vice president for academic affairs, presided at the honors ceremony.
The deans of each college assisted in recognizing the Faculty Award recipients – those students chosen by the faculty in each department to receive the outstanding student designation.

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