Honors Student Highlights
Andrea Anaya-Sandoval, Newman Civic Fellow
Andrea Anaya-Sandoval, a sophomore Honors student at Marymount University, has been selected to receive Campus Compact’s 2022-2023 Newman Civic Fellowship. She is one of 173 civic leaders from 38 states, Washington, D.C., and Mexico who form this year’s cohort and are recognized for their outstanding commitment to creating positive change in communities locally and around the world. Anaya-Sandoval is originally from San Salvador, El Salvador, and immigrated to the U.S. with her mother at the age of five before settling in Silver Spring, Md. As an undocumented student, she holds a deep passion for immigrant rights.
Ultimately, Anaya-Sandoval found her calling in the frontlines of the migrant rights movement as an organizer. Following her internship with Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD), she volunteered with the nonprofit United We Dream, the largest youth-led network fighting for equity and immigrant rights. She not only participated in protests and community gatherings on behalf of immigrant rights, but also began to lead these civic engagements in her local community. She has pitched in on a phone and text banking campaign encouraging millions of Latinx voters with mixed-status families around the country to exercise their right to vote. This past summer, Anaya-Sandoval was selected as a Dream Summer Fellow, an annual national fellowship of the UCLA Labor Center’s Dream Resource Center. As part of the fellowship, she worked with the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nonprofit focused on reform by providing resources to a network of university leaders and higher education institutions.
Through the Newman Civic Fellowship, Campus Compact provides these students with a year of learning and networking opportunities that emphasize personal, professional and civic growth. Each year, Fellows participate in numerous virtual training and networking opportunities that provide them with the skills and connections they need to create large-scale positive change. The cornerstone of the Fellowship is the Annual Convening of Fellows, which offers intensive skill-building and networking over the course of two days. The Fellowship also provides Fellows with pathways to apply for exclusive scholarship and post-graduate opportunities.
Kristen Netter, AmeriCorps Program
Undergraduate Honors student Kristen Netter was selected as the inaugural AmeriCorps Member for the K2H Civic Futures AmeriCorps Program grant through the nonprofit Campus Compact. Through the Civic Futures Program, Kristen will implement civic engagement opportunities for students at K-12 schools or community-based organizations in partnership with Marymount. She will devote a minimum of 300 service hours over the next year as a Civic Mentor to develop and implement a program that provides youth with the opportunity to become meaningfully involved in their community.
“I am very ecstatic for this new position and I’m eager to get to work,” Netter said. “It was always a goal of mine to work for AmeriCorps, and I’m grateful that I was given this life-changing opportunity.”
Courtney Stephens, Phi Kappa Phi Fellowship
Honors alumna Courtney Stephens is among the nation’s top scholars to receive a 2021 Fellowship from the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. Stephens joins only four other students across the country to earn the Society’s competitive Walter and Adelheid Hohenstein Fellowship of $8,500.
“I would like to thank all the Marymount faculty members who have helped me along the way, as well as the individuals who I have worked closely with in the medical field that have helped me find a passion in anesthesia,” Stephens expressed.
As an undergraduate Honors student at Marymount, Stephens completed a major in Biochemistry and two minors in Mathematics and Quantitative Science. She balanced the prestige of being a member of the nation’s oldest and most selective all-discipline honor society with her academics, and as a member of the Saints Women’s Soccer team.
Kaylee Tyner, Newman Civic Fellow
Kaylee, an Honors student political science major, was announced as a member of Campus Compact’s 2021-2022 cohort of Newman Civic Fellows. Kalyee is originally from Littleton, Colo., and is a graduate of Columbine High School. She is a student leader and passionate advocate for the gun violence prevention movement. For the past three years, she has served as an executive council member for Team ENOUGH, and has lobbied on numerous policies aimed towards decreasing gun violence on local and national levels.
In her work, she encourages young people to get involved by helping them register to vote and engage with issues that directly impact their communities. In 2019, she launched #MyLastShot, which gained national attention for reaching over 20,000 people with the heart-wrenching message that young people give consent to have images of their death publicized in the event they die from gun violence.
“As a leader working towards addressing the root causes of social injustices, I have discovered that I can’t wait around for other people to change the world – I have to actively be a part of the change.”
Kaitlin Berger, Fulbright Scholar
Kaitlin Berger is a former Honors student criminal justice major pursuing her master’s at the National University of Public Service in Budapest, Hungary. Berger plans to examine how issues such as time to arraignment, length of sentences, prison programming opportunities, and recidivism rates differ between Hungary and the United States.
“I have always been interested in pursuing a career that is on an international level, and recently I have been drawn toward creating or researching policy that affects human rights,” Berger said. “The more I looked into this opportunity, the more I realized how it fits perfectly with my plans for the future.
