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Carson-Newman presents Atkins and Parker with Sullivan Honors

Carson-Newman seniors Abigail Parker, center left, and Curtis Atkins, center right, receive the University’s Algernon Sydney Sullivan Awards from President Randall O’Brien, and Executive Vice President and Provost Kina Mallard.  The two were celebrated during C-N’s Honors Convocation.

Carson-Newman seniors Abigail Parker, center left, and Curtis Atkins, center right, receive the University’s Algernon Sydney Sullivan Awards from President Randall O’Brien, and Executive Vice President and Provost Kina Mallard. The two were celebrated during C-N’s Honors Convocation.

Carson-Newman University presented seniors Curtis Atkins and Abigail Parker its Algernon Sydney Sullivan Awards during the institution’s annual Honors Convocation on April 11.

Atkins, the son of Oak Ridge’s Jim and Sherry Atkins, is a religion major. Beyond his strong academic standing in religion, Atkins has served on the Mortar Board and is a stalwart servant in C-N’s Bonner Scholars Program. In that capacity, he spent a summer working with Anderson County’s Department of Children’s Services and Urban Promise, the important youth development outreach program in Camden, New Jersey. He has also invested himself in Jefferson City by working with the local DCS.

As the Bonner Senior Intern this year, Atkins has provided a powerful voice in strategic planning and programming, helping set the trajectory for the future of both the Bonner Scholars Program and the University’s Bonner Center. He is cited as a vital part of the Center’s daily success and noted for having a love that underlies all his efforts. Atkins was a central figure in last year’s highly successful Summer Leadership Institute, the Bonner Foundation’s largest conference through which 350 participants came from all over for a week of seminars, networking and fellowship.

Campbellsville, Kentucky’s Abigail Parker is the daughter of Virgil and Dr. Jeannette Parker. She is a sociology and English double major and Honors Program fellow. For four years she has worked with both Carson-Newman’s Yoke Ministries and Baptist Campus Ministries (BCM). Noted cited as being a strong encourager and an accountability leader, her involvement with BCM is but one reflection of her commitment to Christ. A two-year mission chair, she has been a Leadership Executive Team Member for three years, thrice served as a Carson-Newman SPOTS missions team leader, and is currently serving as BCM president.

Parker spent last summer as an intern for Compassion International and worked as an Operation Inasmuch outreach volunteer three years. Her other honors and service include Mortar Board, where her projects included leading a drive for bone marrow donors, and involvement with Alpha Chi Honor Society, which included a recent study of Sherlock Holmes through psychoanalytic literary theory. The Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society member has participated in Research, Creativity and Performance Days, the Chez Vous Study Abroad Program, and she conceptualized and created a successful partnership for displaying student art at a local business.

The New York Southern Society established the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award in 1926 to honor an Indiana native and Manhattan attorney who was considered a living example of genteel spirit and Christian compassion. The awards, which are donated by the foundation that bears his name, are granted at 61 colleges and universities to graduating seniors, one female and one male, who “excel in high ideals of living, in fine spiritual qualities, and in generous and unselfish service to others.”

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