NOTES ON PEOPLE (04/05/98)

NOTES ON PEOPLE

Named to USA Today's team of top students

FARMVILLE, Va. - Longwood College senior Raissa Czemerynski is one of 20 students nationwide selected to USA Today's 1998 All-USA College Academic First Team, the only student from a Virginia school, and the first Longwood student to be chosen for this honor.

Among the First Team winners of 11 men and nine women are students with majors in biology, agricultural development, theater, community development, applied physics, and biomedical engineering, representing schools such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins University, Dartmouth College and Texas A&M. Ms. Czemerynski is a therapeutic recreation major.

Nearly 1,200 undergraduates nationally were nominated for the 1998 awards, the ninth year that USA Today has sponsored the program. "We at USA Today are proud to continue a commitment to honoring academic excellence and community service throughout the country," said Editor David Mazzarella.

Nominees were judged for outstanding individual scholarship or intellectual achievement, and leadership roles in activities on or off campus as the most important criteria, but also for academic performance, honors, awards, rigor of academic pursuits and the ability to express themselves in writing.

The winners were invited to an awards luncheon on February 13 at USA Today headquarters in Arlington, Va., and were featured that day in a two-page color section of the newspaper, "saluting the best and the brightest."

A check for $2,500 and a trophy were presented to each student by Tom Curley, president and publisher of USA Today, before an audience of well over 100 family and friends. Ms. Czemerynski was accompanied by her parents, and several professors.

In her letter nominating Ms. Czemerynski for the award, the director of Longwood's honors program, Susan Bagby, wrote "Raissa has always quietly gone about creating her own learning experience ... she is highly motivated, musically gifted, academically talented, athletic and extremely hard-working."

Ms. Czemerynski, 21, is a Longwood Scholar; a member of the college's honors program, Phi Kappa Phi national honor society, and Mortar Board, an honorary leadership society; and a former president of the Therapeutic Recreation Organization. She received the Virginia Recreation and Park Society's Student Recognition Award last September, which recognizes distinguished performance in academics and the therapeutic recreation field, and she was nominated recently for a Michael Schwerner Activist Award from the Gleitsman Foundation of Malibu, Calif.

Ms. Czemerynski, who grew up in a Ukrainian American family and also speaks Ukrainian, organized and partly financed a three-week internship last summer at Lviv Regional Specialized Children's Hospital in Ukraine to conduct therapeutic recreation activities with young victims, children between 8 and 10 years-old, of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

She is currently doing an internship in her hometown of Philadelphia, with children under age 6 at the Children's Seashore House, one of the oldest hospitals in the nation for long-term care of children with chronic illnesses. She'll graduate from Longwood in May and plans to work with children and adolescents in the therapeutic recreation field. She was one of 15 therapeutic recreation majors at Longwood who worked as volunteer aides at the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta.

"Raissa is perhaps the most gifted student I have every had the pleasure of working with during my 18 years of teaching," said Dr. Patricia Shank, associate professor of therapeutic recreation at Longwood. "She is extremely committed to her profession and her work with people with disabilities ... She is one of the most carring, sensitive and genuine persons I have ever met. She is truly in a league of her own."

Ms. Czemerynski graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls.

Sworn in as judge in Montgomery County, Pa.

NORRISTOWN, Pa. - Judge Wasyl "William" Ihor Maruszczak was sworn in on January 12 by Judge Joseph Smythe for a six-year term of office as a judge of the District Court in Montgomery County, Pa. Holding the Bible are his parents, Wasyl and Annastasia Maruszczak of Clifton, N.J. Judge Maruszczak is a first-generation Ukrainian American and was elected by a landslide victory in November 1997.

Selected as intern at Ohio Statehouse

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Larysa (Lesia) Wallace was named a 1997 Legislative Service Commission intern at the Ohio Statehouse.

Ms. Wallace, a 1993 graduate of Fairbanks High School and a 1997 graduate of Bowling Green State University, is the daughter of Irena and James Wallace of Plain City, longtime members of the Ukrainian American community in Columbus.

The 13-month internship at the statehouse attracts highly qualified and motivated people to careers in public service. The program was established more than 30 years ago and offers college graduates the opportunity to work as staff assistants to members of the Ohio House and Senate.

Intern duties include assisting legislators by answering constituent inquiries, writing press releases and speeches, researching prospective legislation, attending legislative meetings and drafting legislation. They also include working in the Ohio Government Telecommunication Center and performing other administrative duties.

Ms. Wallace is one of 24 interns selected from more than 250 applicants. The internships are full-time paid positions.

Ms. Wallace majored in international studies at Bowling Green State University and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. She spent the fall semester of 1996, working as an intern at the Center for Democracy in Washington. She assisted in planning and organizing the International Judicial Conference (IJC) in the capital, and worked with the international Supreme Court justices during the IJC, especially those from Ukraine.

For six weeks in the summer of 1997 Ms. Wallace studied Ukrainian at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv.

In her current legislative internship, she is working for three senators with assignments on the judiciary committee and the criminal justice subcommittee.