Last modified: Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Students selected to address 2013 IU Bloomington commencement
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 23, 2013
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Graduating seniors Deanna Allbrittin and Sonia Phadke have been selected to be student speakers for 2013 Indiana University Bloomington undergraduate commencement ceremonies.
Commencement will take place Saturday, May 4, at Assembly Hall. Allbrittin will speak at the 10 a.m. ceremony, and Phadke will address the 3 p.m. ceremony, continuing a tradition that resumed with the selection of student commencement speakers in 2010.
Deanna Allbrittin, left, and Sonia Phadke will be the student speakers at the 2013 IU Bloomington commencement exercises.
"Deanna and Sonia have made the most of their years at IU Bloomington with their sterling academic achievements, leadership activities, community service work and international study," said Sonya Stephens, vice provost for undergraduate education. "Each has a remarkable and inspiring story to tell. As commencement speakers, they will be outstanding representatives of and spokeswomen for the Class of 2013."
Allbrittin, from Mason, Ohio, is majoring in journalism with a broadcast specialization in the IU School of Journalism. She has minors in political science, economics and Spanish.
An IU Founders Scholar and recipient this year of the university's Elvis J. Stahr Distinguished Senior Award, she has been active with student media throughout her time at Indiana University. She has been news director, reporter and producer for IU Student Television and a staff reporter for the Indiana Daily Student, and she has worked as an intern with WTIU-WFIU in Bloomington and WXIN-TV in Indianapolis.
She was one of six national winners of CBS News paid summer fellowships, resulting in a broadcasting internship with CBS News in New York in 2012. She has taken part in overseas study and student reporting and research trips to South Korea, Ghana, Chile and China.
Allbrittin volunteers with the Boys and Girls Club, served on the Hutton Honors College Advisory Council and has represented the university as a School of Journalism ambassador and a multicultural outreach recruitment educator.
Phadke, from Valparaiso, Ind., is majoring in biology with a minor in chemistry and a certificate from the Liberal Arts and Management Program. She is a Herman B Wells Scholar and a student in the Hutton Honors College.
She founded the Mukund Phadke One More Heartbeat Foundation, which has organized 5-kilometer walks and raised money to purchase life-saving automated external defibrillators for places of worship. It honors the memory of her father, who died when she was a senior in high school.
At IU, Phadke has been communications director with Global Medical Brigades; was a partner and event coordinator with the Virtu Project, a Liberal Arts and Management Program mock investment portfolio that raised money for Indianapolis-based charity Timmy Global Health; and a member and philanthropic chair of the LAMP advisory board.
She studied abroad in Italy and Australia and took part in a community service trip to Honduras.
IU Bloomington undergraduate commencement ceremonies take place May 4 at 10 a.m. for students earning degrees in business, music, education, informatics and computing, journalism, nursing, optometry, SPEA, public health and social work, and at 3 p.m. for students earning degrees from the College of Arts and Sciences. For more information see the Office of University Ceremonies website.
