Penn State nominates two juniors for national Truman Scholarship

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State nominated Anton Aluquin and Luisina Kemanian-Leites for the 2022 Truman Scholarship, a prestigious award that recognizes U.S. college juniors for their commitments to public service.  

Aluquin and Kemanian-Leites joined 705 nominees from colleges and universities across the nation in vying for the scholarship, which provides awardees with up to $30,000 for post-graduate studies. The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation named its finalists on Feb. 18, and though Aluquin and Kemanian-Leites were not selected, Penn State celebrates their outstanding achievements and future potential. 

“We applaud Anton for his commitment to improving the lives of others,” said Dean Rick Roush of the College of Agricultural Sciences, in which Aluquin is a student. “His academic and professional goals to address health inequities and social injustices are admirable, and we are confident his work will have a positive impact on today’s generation and those to follow. We congratulate him on his nomination for the Truman Scholarship.” 

Clarence Lang, Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts, likewise commented on the achievements of Kemanian-Leites. “On behalf of everyone associated with our college, I’d like to congratulate Luisina on being nominated for the prestigious Truman Scholarship. It is obvious that her experiences, both personal and academic, have inspired her empathy towards, and desire to help, others. I cannot wait to see what the future holds for her.” 

Anton Aluquin  

Aluquin, of Hershey, Pennsylvania, is a student in the College of Agricultural Sciences and the Schreyer Honors College who is pursuing a degree in immunology and infectious disease, along with a minor in health policy and administration and a pre-med track. He is also a student in the Presidential Leadership Academy, where he and a cohort of peers study leadership with Penn State President Eric Barron.  

Aluquin is striving to build the educational foundation to address health inequities in infectious diseases spread, as both a physician and policy advocate.  

“It wasn’t until COVID-19 that I realized the importance of combining my interest in health inequities with my work on infectious disease,” he explained. “The pandemic has really helped me explore my passions for these issues and how those two things play into my future career.” 

Aluquin is exploring these two, related interests through undergraduate research. One project, in the Health Policy and Administration Department within the College of Health and Human Development, has examined health inequities relating to COVID-19. The other, in the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, has investigated resistance to vaccines and antibiotics.  

He is also advocating for change in his community. As the structural reform chair of a local movement known as the 3/20 Coalition, whose name refers to the date Osaze Osagie died during an encounter with local police, he is advocating for police reform in the State College community. His work helped to establish a new Community Oversight Board to work with the State College Police Department.  

Aluquin has taken his work as an organizer to the county and national levels, too. As a field organizer for Central PA United, he campaigns for progressive Democratic candidates to the State College Borough Council. He also worked to bring out the vote in support of Democratic congressional candidates during the 2020 election cycle. 

After graduating from Penn State and taking a gap year to recharge and refocus, Aluquin hopes to pursue a dual medical doctor/master of public health at either George Washington University or Georgetown University. From there, he hopes to treat patients in the clinical arena while advocating for policy changes in a major city, ideally Washington D.C. His ultimate goal is to become a public health physician for an organization such as the Centers for Disease Control.  

Luisina Kemanian-Leites 

Kemanian-Leites, of State College, Pennsylvania, is a student in the Schreyer Honors College and the College of the Liberal Arts with a major in international politics and minors in Arabic, Spanish, Latin American studies and Middle East studies. She also is a participant in the Paterno Fellows Program. 

With parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Uruguay — and great grandparents who fled the 1915 Armenian genocide — Kemanian-Leites has seen firsthand the challenges immigrants and refugees face in navigating immigration systems and acclimating to new cultures. This background has inspired her commitment to advocating for these populations, a commitment she has fulfilled through a range of academic and co-curricular experiences. 

She has engaged in undergraduate research with Yael Warshel in the Children, Media and Conflict Zones Lab in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. The mission of the lab, according to the lab’s website, is to “explore how media may be used to play meaningful roles in the lives of children and youth in conflict zones.” In addition, Kemanian-Leites is writing her Schreyer honors thesis on international military interventions during mass killings and genocides, under the guidance of Roseanne McManus in the Department of Political Science. She is exploring these issues further through study abroad: this semester in Jordan, and next semester in Chile.  

After she graduates, Kemanian-Leites hopes to secure a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award to teach English in the West Bank or Latin America. From there, she hopes to pursue advanced degrees in law and international affairs, ideally at Columbia University. Her ultimate goal is to work as an immigration rights lawyer with a focus on Latin America or the Middle East.  

About the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation 

Penn State has had a total of eight Truman Scholars, with the most recent being Sara Ryan, a political science and African American studies major who received the award in 2004. Selection by the Truman Foundation is based on records of leadership, public service and academic achievement. 

Students interested in applying for the Truman Scholarship are encouraged to meet with Undergraduate Research and Fellowships Mentoring (URFM) in their first or second year of undergraduate studies to begin preparing. 

In order to apply, students must be a U.S. citizen or a U.S. national from the Pacific Islands; be a college junior with a GPA of 3.7 or higher; plan to attend a professional or graduate school to prepare for a career in government, nonprofit or advocacy sectors; and commit to spending three of the first seven years after graduate or professional school working in public service.  

Penn State students interested in this and other funded opportunities that help students achieve their goals are invited to reach out to URFM at urfm@psu.edu. 

Undergraduate Research and Fellowships Mentoring is part of the Office of Undergraduate Education.