The annual Global Citizenship Awards were presented once again to three students who, through a process of nominations and applications, were decided to best represent the college’s values. This year’s awardees were Fatima Zahara, Silas Immanuel and Arleth Martinez. 

The award, in addition to its prestige, gives the two runner-up students a $5,000 scholarship and the winner with $10,000. This year, Immanuel and Martinez were awarded runners-up and Zahara was awarded first place.

The Global Citizenship scholarship was started in 2022 by a contribution from Goshen College alumni Shashi Buluswar. Buluswar is the founder and president of the Institute for Transformative Technologies. 

He is a scientist and social entrepreneur who works on issues such as global health, energy access and both food and water security. He was also present at the ceremony this year. 

The process of selecting the awardees starts with professors writing a nomination essay, after which the student receives an email stating their nomination. The nominees then write their own essay delving into why they believe they best represent Goshen College’s five core values. The nominating professor is not disclosed to the nominee. 

Arleth Martinez, one of the runners-up, is active on campus academically as a sociology major with a minor in social policy and advocacy. Beyond academics, she is also the president and co-founder of One Circle, GC’s affinity group for Native American students and Indigenous rights on campus. Martinez also writes for The Record and is on the women’s cross-country team.

For Martinez, the experience started at the end of last semester when she received an email saying that she was nominated. 

“It was one of the most nerve-racking essays I ever wrote in my life,” Martinez said. 

She shared that she divided her application essay into chunks and tried to be honest about why she represented the core values. She commented on how Goshen helped her to connect to the values, and how she thought that she lacked some, but after taking her time to think about it she could relate in a different way.

She also reached out for help from friends, stating, “I would say that finding people, like a support system, to look through it [was helpful], so you would get another perspective.”  

At the beginning of June, she got the news that she had received the scholarship but was told to keep the information confidential, so she only found out who the other two awardees were at the presentation convocation. 

The other runner-up was Silas Immanuel, a film production and accounting double major. As suits the parameters of the award, he is also a student producer at FiveCore media, leader of Unity, a campus Bible study group, and leader of the International Student club. 

In receiving the congratulatory notice, Immanuel and Martinez’s experiences differed. Immanuel reflected on the moment, saying, “It was really embarrassing because I was at a shoot for Maple Scholars at the time. I read half the email, and was super excited, and told the people who were shooting with me that I won the award. And then I read the rest of it and it said not to tell anyone.”

Immanuel shared that he was honored just to be nominated for the award, though he had previously believed that he had no chance to win because of the other talented students in his class. He summarized his experience by saying, “It’s important to remember that there are so many cool students in our college that do so many cool things, and it’s exciting to be a part of that.”

Zahara was the overall winner of the $10,000 scholarship. She can be seen in many performance groups and stage productions on campus, such as: Queen Singers, Battle of the Bands (with Potential Novelty), choirs, plays, musicals, and, the last two years, Parables.

“It was just a crazy amount of imposter syndrome,” she said when asked about her reaction to winning. “And also like ‘Oh my God! I can’t tell anyone and I want to know who the other winners are.’”

With reporting by Mackenzie Miller and Charlie Aldrich.