2025 Freddye T. Davy Scholarship Recipient

Describe your service to your honors program, campus, and university as an honors student. Provide concrete examples of initiatives you have led.

Before I ever entered college, I already understood the power of direct service. At age eight, I co-founded People Need Blankets, a grassroots initiative that delivered over 500 blankets, 100 tents, and 100 hot meals to unhoused individuals in Southern California. We didn’t have nonprofit status; we had compassion, urgency, and the determination to act. That experience taught me that service isn’t about prestige or structure, it’s about presence and persistence. I’ve carried that belief with me into every role I’ve held as an Honors student at Dominican University New York.

Within the Honors Program, I transformed the Honors Newsletter from a faculty-run newsletter into a student-led, community-centered platform that highlights personal stories, creative expression, and the people behind the program. I invited submissions from students who didn’t typically feel seen, and worked directly with them to share their voices confidently. We moved away from a Staff-led newsletter to one that reflected the honors program's values, our identity, and our community. It wasn’t about making it more academic; it was about making it serve the honors community.

I’ve also served as a representative at Open Houses and Accepted Student Days, where I speak candidly about my experiences as a hard-of-hearing, disabled, and neurodivergent student. I want future Honors students, especially those who don’t fit the traditional mold, to know that they belong here, not because they check a box, but because they bring something vital.

Describe how you as an honors student can encourage more diversity and inclusion both inside and outside the classroom. How can honors students promote diversity both on their campuses and in the broader community?

As a Native American woman in STEM, a disabled student, and a first-generation college attendee on my father’s side, I’ve spent my life in spaces where people like me were often invisible. But instead of shrinking myself to fit into existing systems, I’ve focused on reshaping them, so that others wouldn’t have to go through the same fight for recognition, access, and dignity.

Inclusion, for me, begins with visibility, but it doesn’t end there. Inside the classroom, I’ve pushed for broader definitions of “excellence.” That includes validating interdisciplinary, creative, and lived-experience-based work within our Honors culture. As Honors Newsletter Editor, I didn’t just “encourage diversity”, I actively sought out submissions from students who had never contributed before. I worked with them through edits, spotlighted their voices, and made sure they felt represented.

My academic research on bias in AI systems is a direct reflection of my belief that data, like people, deserves to be treated ethically. I now apply those principles at Jawonio, a nonprofit where I build HIPAA-compliant digital tools for people with disabilities. My work at Jawonio bridges the ideas from theory into practice to create equity in code, not just a conversation about inclusion in technology. I utilize my skills in coding to create applications that, at heart, have the needs of individuals with disabilities in mind.

Outside the classroom, my leadership as Equity and Inclusion Senator has led to real structural changes, from campus-wide accessibility audits to more inclusive leadership pipelines. Through Chargers for a Cure, I’ve organized awareness weeks, care package drives, and conversations around rare illness and survivor identity. Through Debate Society, I’ve hosted forums that gave space to perspectives rarely heard in academic debate: disabled students, women of color, and working-class voices.

But diversity work shouldn’t fall solely on the shoulders of those most affected. Every Honors student, regardless of their background, has a role to play. That means stepping back so others can step forward. It means mentoring students from different backgrounds, inviting new voices into leadership, and advocating for systemic change even when it’s inconvenient. Inclusion is not a side project. It’s a standard we should build into our syllabi, our programming, and our everyday decisions.

Inclusion is about more than representation; it’s about reallocation. Reallocating power, voice, and opportunity. Honors students are often called the “future leaders” of their fields, but that future won’t be just if we keep recreating the same barriers that we had the privilege to overcome. If we want change, we need to model it, not just with our research, but with our relationships and our institutions.

The Dominican Honors Program isn't about fitting into a societal mold; it's not about getting all A’s. The honors program facilitates a place for thought, a place for societal change. In the honors program, I had the opportunity to come and build something that creates change for the greater good. I hope every Honors student will feel empowered to do so too. In honors, it's not just succeeding within the system, but transforming it into something better!