What makes up stand out

Lafayette Ideal

The George Wharton Pepper Prize, awarded annually to the senior “who most nearly represents the Lafayette ideal,” was established in 1923 by George Wharton Pepper H’22, a United States Senator from Pennsylvania, an attorney, and a founding member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association. Our 2018 Pepper Prize finalists shared a defining moment of their college career and the spot where it occurred.

Kenzie Corbin

“After the showing of my documentary about the opioid crisis in the Lehigh Valley (A World of Gray) in fall 2017 in Buck Hall, I broke down and cried because I felt so fulfilled. I had always wanted to take a film class, especially a documentary one, but it didn’t fit my schedule until senior year. I had become interested in the opioid crisis after witnessing countless overdoses while job shadowing and volunteering at local hospitals. I loved being able to combine my passion of photography/film with science and my future career as a physician. It was one of those moments when I felt purpose and knew that I would continue using art
to bring science to a more understandable and approachable level.”

Bryan Sherrill

 ”I was standing near Dean Julia Goldberg’s office last year when I found out I was awarded the Carolynn Van Dyke Prize through career services to study Spanish and work on civil and environmental engineering projects in Guatemala. My first internship was through a nonprofit called Agua del Pueblo, where I helped design a flood-mitigation system for the community of Miramar. After helping build the first stages of the design, I took another internship redesigning a Mayan spiritual cave site. It became my senior thesis.”

Karla Talley

“The unveiling of the portrait of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in Kirby (Hall) in October 2016 was a defining moment in my Lafayette career because of what it represented. Marshall was the first African- American Supreme Court justice. He was not afraid to dissent against injustices and stand up for civil rights. Every day that I headed to classes in that building and was greeted by Marshall’s portrait, I was reminded of his famous quote that I hope to live by: ‘Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out.”

Rebecca Wai

“Upper Farinon dining hall is where my friends and I started meeting to share our anger over Trump’s ban on refugees and to find a way to fight back. From those conversations, we started raising money for refugees and formed a student group called Refugee Action. We’re hosting a refugee family in an apartment someone donated to us for a year, and we’re getting ready to host a second family.”

Waseh Ahmad

“I started playing squash with a good friend my first year, but I never thought the sport would become as important to me as it did. It was on the courts in Kirby that I met some of my closest friends. When our captain left, we came together as a team and began competing in tournaments. I took on a leadership role with the club and started training players for competition and worked to keep the team motivated. We went to nationals this year in Connecticut and are ranked 54th in the country.”

Emma Sherry

“I was in Dr. Bonnie Winfield’s First-Year Seminar on community engagement and then went to work under her leadership in the Landis Center for Community Outreach. This semester I had the honor of accompanying her to Northampton County Jail on Friday nights and Sunday mornings to participate in workshops on trauma with the women inside. The experience has inspired me to work toward dismantling mass incarceration and the racial inequities of the system.”

Adam Rosen

“When I started college, I thought I wanted to major in biochemistry and pursue a career in health care. However, my job-shadowing experiences and coursework led to my change in a career path and major. Simon L3 helped facilitate this 180-degree shift. It is the place where I took my first economics class and found myself every Friday for Investment Club. It is also the place where I received news that changed my life. On Oct. 28, 2016, I received a call there from Goldman Sachs offering me an internship in its Investment Banking Division. The countless hours of reaching out to Lafayette alumni and leveraging connections to secure summer opportunities in the financial world finally paid off.”

A Joint Investment

The College’s considerable financial aid resources make it possible for Lafayette to provide educational access to all students it admits. In fact, the College stands out for its commitment to meeting 100 percent of its families’ demonstrated need, and is one of a select group of institutions (fewer than 50 nationally) dedicated to lowering and/or eliminating the loan burden for their students.

College Costs

Financial Aid