2018 Ad Lumen Award Winners

For the past five years, every spring, the Ad Lumen Award has been given to four seniors who, in the eyes of their peers and of the faculty, best represent the ideals expressed in the Newark Academy Mission Statement. While the award recipients often excel in the classroom, what distinguishes them is their commitment to enriching the Newark Academy community. In modest and purposeful ways, these students are often the backbones of clubs, sports, and classes; they pursue their passions with energy and focus, giving the best of themselves and bringing out the best in others. Congratulations to this year’s Ad Lumen Award winners Cosimo Fabrizio ’18, Melody Xiao ’18, Allen Zhu ’18 and Elliott Zornitsky ’18.
The creation of the mission-focused Ad Lumen Awards came about six years ago, after a deliberative review of the Academy’s award-giving practice. At that time, the school awarded 66 Upper School and 17 Middle School awards at the end of each school year. “With so many awards, there was a disconnect between what the faculty perceived and what the students perceived as fair in the granting of awards,” recalls Middle School Principal Tom Ashburn, who chaired the review committee. “At the conclusion of our work,” recalls Tom, “we decided to retire the existing awards and create the Ad Lumen Award. We hoped that the wording of the mission statement would yield winners who play different roles in the school community and that the school could recognize all members of the senior class.”
 
In the years since, the end-of-year awards ceremony has been replaced by a Senior Celebration, which begins with the presentation of the Ad Lumen Awards by the Head of School. A brief “biography” of each recipient is read to the community, detailing the student’s qualifications for the commendation. A program of senior performances—wherein members of the senior class offer personal, artistic, and academic reflections—follows. The Celebration also includes a formal senior slideshow, in which every senior’s yearbook portrait is accompanied by a short text detailing his or her contributions to the school. “The awards play a small part in the entire Senior Celebration,” observes Tom. “We highlight the winners as exemplars, noting that they are representatives of the great varieties of excellence we find in every senior class and models for students in grades 6 to 11.”
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An independent school for students in grades 6-12