Austin Davis ’23 and Ella Gantman ’23 were both awarded the 2023 Pyne Prize, the highest general distinction given to undergraduates. Both will be presented with the award at Alumni Day on Feb. 25.
The Pyne Prize is given annually to students that have “most clearly manifested excellent scholarship, strength of character and effective leadership.” It was first awarded in 1922 and its namesake, Moses Taylor Pyne, Class of 1877, was an influential University trustee whose tenure saw the construction of Blair Hall and the Graduate College.
Previous recipients of the award include U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor ’76 and former Princeton President Robert F. Goheen ’40.
There are certain trends that have developed for Pyne Prize recipients over the past eleven years. Davis is the fifth Undergraduate Student Government (USG) member to be awarded the Pyne Prize in the last five years; both of last year’s recipients were USG members, and one was Davis’ predecessor as Academics Chair.
Among recent Pyne Prize winners, we also find Peer Academic Advisors (PAA), Orange Key tour guides, Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative (SINSI) Scholars, Residential College Advisors (RCA), and varsity athletes. Davis is a PAA, while Gantman is a varsity athlete and a SINSI scholar.
In the realm of academics, Pyne Prize recipients most often major in the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) or in the History department, which are Gantman’s and Davis’ majors, respectively. The departments of English, Psychology, Chemistry, and Philosophy have each seen multiple Pyne Prize winners as well.
Gantman, who’s from Washington D.C., is majoring in SPIA and obtaining a certificate in Spanish language and culture.
She also is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a prestigious academic honor society, and plays goalie on the women’s soccer team. She told The Daily Princetonian that her experience as a varsity athlete has complemented her academic pursuits.
“I spend most afternoons out on Plummer Field or in Jadwin Gym surrounded by my teammates doing something we all love,” she said. “My teammates have been my biggest cheerleaders. Having this type of support system at Princeton has been essential to my success in a classroom.”
In a statement to the University, Gantman reflected on the past.
“I was born in a rural rice town in China, and I was orphaned by the time I was a few days old,” she said. “Most of the children from my orphanage will never step onto a college campus. This prize is a reminder of where I come from, where I am and an encouragement to continue to serve my communities.”
“Ella has been an absolute star at Princeton. She is exceptionally smart, rigorous in her thinking, and clearly guided by strong moral values and a passionate desire to help people,” wrote Udi Ofer, the James L. Weinberg Visiting Professor and Lecturer in the School of Public and International Affairs and Gantman’s thesis advisor.
Gantman said that working on her thesis has been “the most intellectually rewarding experience” at Princeton. It looks at the “jail-based disenfranchisement” of eligible voters.
“My county-by-county analysis aims to be the first report that fully illustrates why and how New Jersey’s jailed population is de facto disenfranchised and will provide policy recommendations to pave a route forward,” she wrote to the ‘Prince.’
“Her research is already producing compelling findings that I believe will lead to changes in jail practices in New Jersey.... We will share her thesis with New Jersey state officials, who I believe will take it seriously and initiate changes,” Ofer continued.
After graduation, Gantman plans to pursue a master’s in Public Affairs through the University’s Scholar’s in the Nation’s Service Graduate Fellowship, which entails a two-year master’s program and a two-year fellowship with a government department in the executive branch.
“I am hoping to work in the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. I hope to use my career to reimagine the carceral system, with an emphasis on racial and economic justice always,” Gantman told the ‘Prince.’
Davis is a history major from Pittsburgh, Pa. and he is pursuing a certificate in urban studies.
Davis also won the William Koren Jr. Prize, which is given to the student with the best record in their departmental work in history. He also received the history department’s Lawrence Stone and Shelby Collum Davis Prize, which enabled him to conduct research for his senior thesis in New Mexico last summer.
Davis’ senior thesis focuses on the Ramona Industrial School for Indian Girls of the Southwest, a late 19th century Native American residential school in Santa Fe. Over the course of the late 19th century and early 20th century, many Native American children were violently enrolled in schools intended to erase Indigenous cultures. Davis’ senior thesis advisor, professor Alison Isenberg, told the ‘Prince’ via email that Davis exhibited “an obsession with uncovering details, and motivation to make sense of what he found.”
“He has great instincts about which leads, no matter how small, matter,” Isenberg wrote to the ‘Prince.’ “He makes the writing of history, and talking about it, fun.”
Davis is also a mentor to first-generation and lower-income students as a community ambassador for the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity and has served as the academics chair for the Undergraduate Student Government (USG). In an email statement to the ‘Prince,’ Davis called his experience with the Freshman Scholars Institute, a summer program run through the Emma Bloomberg Center, the “most rewarding experience [he’s] had at Princeton.”
As USG academics chair, Davis has worked “to bridge the gap between students, instructors, and the University administration” to craft policy that contributes to a positive academic experience for students.
“Did I always succeed? No!” Davis wrote of his experience as chair. “But I hope I laid fertile ground in the future for more peers of mine to create even bigger, better things to make the Princeton undergraduate experience the best.”
In the classroom, Davis credited professor Martha Sandweiss and librarian Gabriel Swift’s course “Archiving the American West” as a critical academic experience for him at the University, which allowed him to do archival work and learn “a lot of what it means to be a historian.”
After graduation, Davis plans on contributing to the field of history in some capacity.
“Given that there’s such a controversy over history and history education in public life right now, it’s imperative to have historically informed, actively-engaged people to best understand the United States’ past, participate in debates about the past, and to educate others to build such a society,” he wrote.
The recipients will be recognized at Alumni Day on Feb. 25.
Sandeep Mangat and Isa Yip are head news editors for the ‘Prince.’
Elaine Huang is a head data editor for the ‘Prince.’
Head data editor Charlie Roth contributed reporting.
Please direct any corrections requests to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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