Each year, the Dean of Students recognizes graduating seniors who, through their involvement on- and off-campus, embody Oxy’s four pillars of Equity, Excellence, Community and Service.
The Dean’s Award winners are selected by Dean of Students Vivian Garay Santiago in consultation with others at the College, and the award recognizes a select number of exceptional seniors who, through their activities, have been the embodiment of the College’s four cornerstones of Equity, Excellence, Community, and Service. It's among the most prestigious awards that a student can receive at the College regarding leadership and involvement outside of the classroom.
The College recognizes these exceptional undergraduates for their passion, dedication, hard work and commitment to the Oxy community and beyond. This year, eight winners were selected from the Class of 2026:
Equity
Emma Patton
Grace Adler
Excellence
Rachel Aujero
Major: Politics
Hometown: Fresno, CA
Rachel’s time at Occidental has been spent serving others and developing her passions. From co-leading the Oxy Gaming Club to serving as captain of the Oxy Women’s Golf team, she has always loved being surrounded by community and uplifting others through leadership. Specifically, as a three-year peer advocate and programming assistant for the Project SAFE office, Rachel found her greatest passion in developing resource advocacy and prevention education for students impacted by sexual and interpersonal violence.
Rachel was a Humanities for Just Communities scholar following her first year, conducting research on dentistry in late Antiquity and teeth blackening in Southeast Asia under Prof. Upson-Saia. She was involved in the politics department as a coding teaching assistant for the POLS 300 Research course and the Senior Comprehensive course. She was co-recipient of the Jane Jaquette award for public service for her time as a teaching assistant within the department. She received distinction and honors for her comprehensive research project, “Admitting Americans in Waiting: Naturalization as a Form of Political Incorporation.”
Outside the classroom, Rachel was a four-year member of the Women’s Golf team and was a 3-time recipient of SCIAC Conference honors. In her last competition, Rachel received the Sportsmanship Award from the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletics Conference. Following graduation, Rachel will be moving to Chico, CA to serve as Judicial Fellow for the Capital Fellows Program. After the fellowship, Rachel plans to attend law school and pursue a career in public defense and immigration.
Liliana Madrid Larrañaga
Major: Kinesiology minor: public health
Hometown: Albuquerque, NM
As a woman of color with profound hearing loss, Liliana is passionate about improving health equity and strives to provide for those underrepresented in healthcare. She has worked closely with the Albuquerque Student Health Advisory Council and the New Mexico Alliance for School-Based Health Care for many years to identify and address barriers to accessing healthcare in low-income and rural areas across New Mexico.
At Oxy, Liliana has interned with Essential Access Health, where she was certified as a family planning health worker, providing equitable reproductive health care to her community. On campus, she is part of the Peer Power Program (PPP) and has worked with Emmons Wellness Center to provide free sexual health and harm reduction information as well as materials such as condoms, Narcan, and fentanyl test strips to all students. She is also a residential advisor, president of Newman Catholics on campus, and a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar. She plans to pursue a career as a midwife and advocate for the rights of Indigenous women and others underrepresented in rural New Mexico.
Service
Jhozibel Medina Gonzalez
Major: Economics
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Jhozibel grew up in a predominantly immigrant working-class community in Los Angeles, hence her deep commitment to making legal aid and resources accessible to undocumented immigrants and immigrant youth.
On campus, Jhozibel was an administrative coordinator for the Neighborhood Partnership Program. There she worked to plan events that brought students and parents from partner LAUSD schools to Oxy’s campus, such as College and Career Access Day, as well as encouraging first-generation college students to pursue higher education. Jhozibel was also a labor liaison on the Diversity and Equity Board (DEB), a branch of student government. Through DEB, she worked closely with Campus Dining and Facilities Management to ensure workers on campus felt their needs were heard and their essential hard work was appreciated. Specifically, Jhozibel worked to cater special lunches, put together care packages, and build close connections with workers on campus.
Off campus, Jhozibel has continued her advocacy work for the immigrant community of L.A. As an intern at CHIRLA, Jhozibel assisted the legal staff in translating evidentiary documents and client-attorney meetings, where she witnessed the difficulties of navigating the legal system with a language barrier in place. At Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, working alongside social workers, Jhozibel developed English language curriculum and led workshops to meet the need for remote community spaces during a time of heightened ICE activity. Post-graduation, Jhozibel plans to attend law school and become a legal resource and political advocate for her community of immigrants.
Grace Optekar
Major: Politics
Hometown: Milwaukee, WI
At Occidental, Grace has built a strong sense of community through leadership, advocacy, and service. Grace has pursued her passions for justice and connection through athletics, student organizations, admissions, and public interest work.
Grace has been a member and leader of the cross-country and track & field teams all four years, where she developed an appreciation for discipline and teamwork. She has also served on the executive board of Oxy’s Planned Parenthood club all four years, including two years as president, working for reproductive justice and community education.
As a politics major, Grace had the opportunity to work with the nonprofit law firm Public Counsel on the Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign, where she supported efforts to advance protections and justice for street vendors across the city. This experience deepened her commitment to pursuing equity through the law.
Outside the classroom, Grace has been an active member of the local sorority chapter Alpha Lambda Phi Alpha all four years, serving as both social chair and philanthropy chair. As philanthropy chair, she partnered with reproductive justice organizations throughout L.A. to raise awareness and encourage engagement within the Oxy community. She also works in Oxy’s Office of Admission as a Senior Fellow, helping prospective students and families navigate the college experience.
Following graduation, Grace will be working at Munger, Tolles & Olson as a legal administrative specialist before pursuing law school. She hopes to continue using the law as a tool to advocate for justice, strengthen communities, and create meaningful change.
Community
Danielle Levin
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Issaquah, WA
Danielle’s time at Oxy has been shaped by a deep passion for her community. She has served in a variety of leadership positions spanning clubs, student government, and student life. Danielle spent two years as the vice president of finance for Associated Students of Occidental College. In this role, she also served as a member of the College’s Budget and Strategic Advisory Committee and Presidential Advisory Group on Community and Dialogue. She spent several years working in the SLICE office in addition to serving on the Hillel e-board for four years, including the last year as president.
As a psychology major, Danielle has been a research assistant in the Occidental Canine Intelligence Lab since her sophomore year. Here, she developed an interest in comparative and developmental psychology. During her junior year she pursued an independent research project with support from an Undergraduate Research Center’s Summer Research Fellowship. She established the lab’s first field site location in partnership with Pup Culture Collective and Rescue in Pasadena. This work culminated in an honors thesis looking at the role of environment in working memory and self-control in pet and shelter dog populations.
Danielle will be heading to the University of Washington to pursue graduate studies in Learning Sciences and Human Development. She hopes to build a career bridging research and practice in educational spaces. She would like to thank, among others, her friends and family, the SLICE office, Ben Greenberg, and Dr. Zachary Silver for their constant support throughout her Oxy journey.
Clare Kennerly
Majors: Comparative Studies in Literature & Culture, economics
Hometown: Brevard, NC
Growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains and playing music with friends and family in North Carolina has strongly shaped Clare's approach to community involvement. She tries to include creativity and community in all of her endeavors at Oxy.
As vice president of the Womxn of Economics Club, she has helped foster a more welcoming and supportive environment for female-identifying students in the department. For the music community at Oxy, Clare has been managing KOXY Radio for the past three years. Through the radio and with SLICE, she ran concerts for more than 100 student performers, using KOXY as a way to make arts opportunities more accessible to students. She also helped open the KOXY Band Practice Room and co-founded the Oxy Jazz Festival, an annual celebration that brings live music and community together on campus.
When she's not playing music, Clare can be found studying languages—whether that's math in the economics department, German language abroad, or translating Russian short stories with CSLC. She received both the Schwartz Economics Research Scholarship and an ASP Research Grant to study the jazz scene in Paris, where she explored sustainable arts businesses and community development in jazz clubs and jam sessions.
After graduation, Clare will move to Philadelphia to work in finance before pursuing graduate studies abroad. She is grateful for her supportive family and friends back home, who have inspired her to center joy and creativity in all that she does.
Equity
Emma Patton
Major: Psychology minor: sociology
Hometown: Albuquerque, NM
Emma is passionate about advocacy work, providing confidential support for folks, and educating students on topics such as consent and boundary setting. On campus, Emma has been a peer advocate (PA) for Project SAFE for the past three years. She has led countless trainings and created educational materials for the office of Project SAFE. Additionally, she has led workshops, guided movie screenings, developed club/student organization-specific trainings, and assisted in running campus-wide programming.
Emma has been involved in multiple labs on campus: Prof. Patricia Cabral’s health psychology research lab, Prof. Nicholas Grebe’s physiological psychology research lab, and Dr. Steve Clark’s psychology research lab. Emma conducted an honors research project titled “College Women's Invisible Disabilities, Bodily Autonomy, and Sexual Experiences.” She received the Dr. Andrea Hopmeyer Excellence in Psychology Award.
Emma has also helped to maintain connections to off-campus organizations that do violence prevention work in the greater L.A. area. This topic has been very important to her throughout her time at Occidental. Following graduation she hopes to continue doing advocacy and educational work.
Grace Adler
Major: Psychology
Hometown: New York, NY
Grace’s journey at Occidental has been defined by making an impact on her campus community and building connections in Los Angeles and beyond. Passionate about overdose prevention, she started an End Overdose chapter at Oxy her sophomore year, offering Narcan training, distributing life-saving resources, and advocating for overdose prevention at the school. Her advocacy led her to become a member of the first peer health educator cohort, and with the support of the program, she developed harm reduction training for incoming first-year classes to receive at orientation.
Off campus, Grace has been involved with the nonprofit organization End Overdose, taking many roles throughout the past four years. These roles include chapter president, social media coordinator, volunteer, and events coordinator—the position she currently holds. Grace’s passion for her community extends beyond overdose prevention, as she also participated in the InternLA program and was the volunteer engagement coordinator at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which was inspired by her time as a member of the Excess Food Recovery Team.
Grace is proud of the long-lasting impact she has made in the Oxy community and is grateful for the many people that have given her the opportunity to do this work. She is excited to take all of the valuable lessons she learned at Occidental into her next chapter.
