Nine Seniors Recognized as President’s Award Recipients at Winthrop Graduation

ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLNA – Winthrop University President Edward Serna ’02 announced at the May 10 undergraduate Commencement ceremonies held at the Winthrop Coliseum that nine seniors are recipients of the President’s Award for Academic Excellence for having the highest GPA in the graduating class.

The president recognized Lily Meisten and Kaylee Mills in the first ceremony held for the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the College of Arts and Sciences. Also recognized was James Craven who did not attend the ceremony.

Meisten is a biology major with dual minors in Spanish and business administration from Greenville, South Carolina. This summer she will begin an internship with Disney and then plans to work in medical device sales. The captain of the soccer team, she was a two-time All-Academic Big South selection, was the conference’s female Scholar-Athlete of the Year and will be announced as one of the student-athletes presented with the Big South Conference’s prestigious George A. Christenberry Award for Academic Excellence.

Mills is a biology major from Jefferson, South Carolina. She conducted research from the time she was a freshman, first in the SEA PHAGES and SEA GENES programs and then in faculty member Kathryn Kohl’s biology laboratory. She completed her honor’s thesis work in Kohl’s lab and presented her work at the Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOUCE) event on campus, where she was an oral presentation finalist. She would like to continue working in a lab setting after graduation conducting research.

Craven is a modern languages and data science major from Blackstock, South Carolina. He participated in a National Science Foundation summer research program where he created machine learning models to better inform the design of biosensors that detect dopamine. He presented his work this spring at High Point University. A lover of language, Craven may enter the working world after graduation and is considering graduate study in computational linguistics.

In the afternoon ceremony, Serna called to the stage the other President’s Award recipients: Isabella Thomas, Lucas Robenolt, Caitlin Lonardo, Kathryn Kiser, Evelyn Conran and Joseph Bokern. The six participated in the ceremony for the College of Business and Technology and the Richard W. Riley College of Education, Sport and Human Sciences.

Thomas, an educational studies major from Rock Hill, will return to Winthrop to complete a Master of Arts in Teaching degree. She wants to teach kindergarten and work in early childhood education. She is a Palmetto Fellows scholarship recipient. One of her teachers said she is extremely caring, always positive, engaged in activities/discussions, is a true team player and models the traits related to character education to teach young children.

Robenolt, a computer science major with a minor in mathematics from Danville, Pennsylvania, plans to pursue a Ph.D. so he can explore research in graphics, virtual reality and augmented reality. He would like to work in animation or as a professor. At Winthrop, he worked as a tutor in computer science and as a student research assistant on an National Science Foundation research project to develop a web portal to conduct data analytics on student-test performance. He and another student won the Walt and Susan Patterson Prize for Outstanding Student Presentation at the Southeastern Mathematical Association of America conference in 2025 for their summer research.

Lonardo, an educational studies major from Brattleboro, Vermont, will return to Winthrop to complete an Master of Arts in Teaching degree. During her undergraduate years, she served as a College of Education, Sport and Human Sciences program ambassador. Her goal is to teach in an elementary school.

Kiser is an early childhood education major from Spartanburg, South Carolina. She will work as a second- or third-grade teacher with the Carlisle-Foster’s Grove Elementary School in Chesnee, South Carolina. She was a member of the Teaching Fellows program and studied abroad in Italy while an undergraduate.

Conran, an educational studies major from Greenville, will return to Winthrop to complete a Master of Arts in Teaching degree. A member of the Teaching Fellows program, she has been an active member of the Council for Exceptional Children and a Floyd Readiness Leader. She would like to become an elementary special education resource educator.

Bokern, a business administration major with an emphasis in accounting and finance from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, will attend graduate school at the University of South Carolina to study information systems and accounting. He was a resident assistant, president of Beta Alpha Psi and served on the College of Business and Technology’s Student Advisory Council. He also was an ambassador for his college and completed an internship in the Small Business Development Center.