On March 31, 2012, four scholars from Washington University in St. Louis were inducted into the Bouchet Graduate Honor Society.  The honorees, doctoral candidates all, are:  Ms. Mary Jane Acuna, Anthropology; Ms. Ericka Merriwether, Movement Sciences and Biomechanics; Mr. Alejandro Reyes, Computational and Systems Biology; and Ms. Helina Woldekiros, Anthropology.

Following a day-long conference at Yale University during which the honorees gave either paper or poster presentations, these high achieving representatives of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences were inducted into the Society during a banquet at the Yale Graduate Club.  Also inducted into the Society were graduate students and post-doctoral fellows from Cornell, Howard, and George Washington Universities, and the Universities of Michigan, California at San Diego, Wisconsin-Madison, and Yale.  The Honorable Richard Blumenthal, United States Senator from Connecticut, was inducted as well as a lifetime member of the Society.
 

The Bouchet Graduate Honor Society, found conjointly by Yale and Howard Universities, is named for Dr. Edward A. Bouchet, the first African American to graduate from Yale College as well as the first to earn the PhD in Physics, also from Yale.  Dr. Bouchet, the first known African American to be admitted to Phi Beta Kappa, was also only the sixth person to earn a doctorate in Physics in the western hemisphere. Bouchet Society members are expected to become “scholars who exemplify academic and personal excellence, foster environments of support and serve as examples of scholarship, leadership, character, service and advocacy for students who have been traditionally underrepresented in the academy.”