Contact: Sasha Steinberg

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Four current students and a December graduate of Mississippi State are receiving honors from the university’s Association of Retired Faculty.

This year’s group includes Sara A. “Abi” Barnes of Louisville; Emily M. Farrar, a civil engineering/environmental engineering major from Pass Christian; Morgan Hydrick, an English and communication/public relations double-major from Brandon; Caroline E. Kelsoe, an environmental economics and management major from Moody, Alabama; and Lara Lynn Waddell, an architecture major from Marietta.

All are seniors but Barnes, who last month received a cum laude degree in sociology.

Founded in 1986, the association continually recognizes outstanding student achievements. Its awards also serve as tributes or memorials to colleagues and association members who made major contributions to student development over their careers at the 138-year-old land-grant institution.

This year’s student winners were recognized formally at the organization’s recent undergraduate banquet. Of the honorees:

—Barnes received the Exemplary Service Award that honors Margaret “Margo” Swain, who joined the MSU social work faculty in 1969 and retired as program director. In addition to her MSU degree, Barnes completed dual-enrollment classes at East Mississippi Community College’s Golden Triangle campus. Former president of the Sociological Student Association, she has served as a mentor to at-risk juveniles in the local community and volunteered with Sally Kate Winters Family Services in West Point.

—Farrar received the Harry C. F. Simrall Award for Engineering Excellence. A President’s List Scholar also pursuing a minor in Spanish, she is a member of the Shackouls Honors College, Society of Scholars and Chi Epsilon civil engineering honor society. Farrar has served as a research assistant and undergraduate researcher in the civil and environmental engineering department. In addition to studying abroad at Universidad de Alcalá in Spain and University of Oxford in England, she was among a group traveling to Simwatachela, Zambia, as part of the MSU chapter of Engineers Without Borders USA’s community assistance program.

—Hydrick received the Peyton W. Williams Jr. Distinguished Writing Award. A President’s List Scholar, she is a member of Phi Kappa Phi and Gold Key honor societies. In the Shackouls Honors College, she has held several offices on the University Honors Council. Additionally, Hydrick is co-editor-in-chief of MSU’s creative arts journal, “The Streetcar.” She was one of two MSU students chosen through Cornell University to participate last summer in a study-abroad program in Turin, Italy, where she studied European demographics and the impact of refugees.

—Kelsoe received the Charles E. Lindley Leadership in Agriculture Award. A member of the Shackouls Honors College and Gamma Sigma Delta and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies, she is active in the campus chapter of the National Agri-Marketing Association. Kelsoe has served as a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Ambassador and is a researcher in the agricultural economics department. This past summer, she took part in a two-week program sponsored by the Mississippi Water Security Institute, as well as a three-week, intensive study-abroad course in development economics at the London School of Economics in England.

—Waddell received the William L. Giles Award for Excellence in Architecture. She is a member of Tau Sigma Delta national honor society and National Organization of Minority Architecture Students. She has interned with Archimania, a Memphis, Tennessee-based, award-winning architecture firm and currently is a drawing and teaching assistant in the College of Architecture, Art and Design. Among other college honors, she was selected for the School of Architecture’s 2016 William Giles Award for design excellence and a $20,000 Aydelott Travel Award.

The ARF awards are memorials to Giles, MSU’s 13th president; Lindley, dean of the then-College of Agriculture and Home Economics; Simrall, dean of the then-College of Engineering; and Williams, an English professor, editor of the campus-based Mississippi Quarterly and first president of the ARF.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.