The annual Asso­ci­a­tion of Prince­ton Grad­u­ate Alumni (APGA) Teach­ing Awards are spon­sored by grad­u­ate alumni and are selected by Dean of the Grad­u­ate School William Rus­sel.  All will be hon­ored at the APGA’s Trib­ute to Teach­ing Recep­tion on Sat­ur­day, June 2. Each win­ner will receive $1,000.

Iwa Nawrocki received her joint bachelor’s degree in his­tory and phi­los­o­phy from McGill Uni­ver­sity in 2007 before com­ing to Prince­ton to study global and transna­tional his­tory, with a focus on mod­ern Latin Amer­ica and East­ern Europe. Nawrocki is being hon­ored for her assis­tance in teach­ing “A His­tory of the World Since 1300″ under the guid­ance of Jeremy Adel­man, the Wal­ter Samuel Car­pen­ter III Pro­fes­sor in Span­ish Civ­i­liza­tion and Cul­ture and pro­fes­sor of his­tory. In nom­i­nat­ing Nawrocki, Adel­man noted her abil­ity to engage the wide vari­ety of stu­dents enrolled in the expan­sive course. “Get­ting stu­dents moti­vated and involved requires energy, devo­tion and an abil­ity to range widely with­out being super­fi­cial. Iwa has all three,” Adel­man wrote. He com­mented on the excep­tion­ally high course eval­u­a­tions and com­pli­ments Nawrocki received from her stu­dents, writ­ing, “Con­sider the key­words of her stu­dents: engag­ing, com­fort­able, thought­ful, clar­i­fy­ing, kind, help­ful, encour­ag­ing. … Exactly the vocab­u­lary one wants to see in one’s teach­ing assis­tant, Iwa deliv­ers.” One stu­dent, describ­ing her ded­i­ca­tion to teach­ing, wrote that Nawrocki “let me know when my ini­tial work was not up to par, and she showed me what she expected of me in her class. Through her teach­ing I learned how to write an A-level his­tory paper, and I feel very pre­pared for any his­tory class to come.” Nawrocki expects to com­plete her Ph.D. in 2015.

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Left: David Peña (right) dur­ing an intern­ship at the Mex­i­can embassy in Madrid, along­side Ernesto Sosa Gal­le­gos (left), a coun­selor in the polit­i­cal affairs divi­sion. Right: Squash player David Peña. (Photo at left cour­tesy of David Peña; photo at right by Bev­erly Schaefer)

For the nearly 1,000 stu­dents, or about 20 per­cent of the University’s under­grad­u­ates, who suit up for Princeton’s 38 var­sity sports teams, life as a student-athlete poses both oppor­tu­ni­ties and challenges.

Var­sity ath­letes have the chance to travel around the United States and even in other coun­tries for com­pe­ti­tion, while cre­at­ing deep bonds with their team­mates, hon­ing their tal­ents and learn­ing val­ues such as lead­er­ship and fair play. Student-athletes, such as David Peña fea­tured below, bal­ance their rig­or­ous ath­letic com­mit­ment with course­work and other extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties dur­ing their col­lege years.

David Peña, class of 2012

Home­town: Mex­ico City

Sport: Men’s squash

Aca­d­e­mic focus: Pol­i­tics major; pur­su­ing a cer­tifi­cate in Latin Amer­i­can studies

Other activ­i­ties: Prince­ton Junior Squash pro­gram; dor­mi­tory assis­tant; work­ing in the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library

Favorite Prince­ton sports moment: “Easy. Feb. 22, 2009, a 5–4 heart­break­ing loss against Trin­ity Col­lege dur­ing the National Team Cham­pi­onship Finals held at Prince­ton. The atmos­phere of play­ing for the cham­pi­onship, the sup­port dis­played by the school and the inten­sity of the six-hour-long game was inde­scrib­able; hard to believe unless you were present. Despite the loss, I am con­fi­dent the best is yet to come.”

On bal­anc­ing squash and other activities: “Like most ath­letes at the col­lege level, I have prac­ticed a sport since I was a child. I think one gets used to the rush and pres­sure of com­bin­ing ath­let­ics with aca­d­e­mics, fam­ily, social life and per­sonal projects. Although it is chal­leng­ing, hav­ing an orga­nized sched­ule is key to bal­ance all the activ­i­ties. In addi­tion, pro­fes­sors, coaches and peers have been will­ing to pro­vide advice and help me along the way.”

Biggest achieve­ment at Prince­ton out­side of squash: “Last year, with sup­port of the Office of Inter­na­tional Pro­grams, I had the oppor­tu­nity to work at the Mex­i­can embassy to Spain, in the polit­i­cal affairs divi­sion. I very much enjoyed the expe­ri­ence, and it made me con­sider per­haps a career path in diplo­macy work­ing for the Mex­i­can Sec­re­tariat of For­eign Affairs.”

Excerpted from this arti­cle pub­lished on the main Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity website