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February 9, 2009
Sarah Yun, a fourth-year Trinity College student in English and political science, is this year’s recipient of the Dean’s Student Leadership Award.
When people talk about Sarah, certain attributes — compassion, drive, determination — come up time and again. Trinity Provost Andy Orchard adds “exhausting” to the list, but is quick to point out that she is exhausting in the best possible way.
“In the space of less than one week, she came into my office to request, very persuasively, funds for an international relations initiative and then for advice, which she hardly needed, about how to establish the student journal as a fixture in the Department of English,” says Prof. Orchard.
By all accounts, a naturally gifted leader with an extremely well-developed sense of community, Sarah has taken on a number of leadership roles on campus and beyond. She is currently chair of the student division of the G8 Research Group (G8RG) at the Munk Centre for International Studies, the world’s leading source of information and analysis on the Group of Eight, its members and its institutions. In this role, Sarah leads 150 G8RG analysts, who range from first-year undergraduates to graduate students to alumni.
Sarah also leads four major research departments in the G8RG, each of which enables students to pursue their own particular area of interest outside of the classroom and often to publish their work. The result is that students become true participants in global politics. She oversees the maintenance of the G8 Live information website, where students post up-to-the-minute G8 news and last June, she presented G8RG research findings at a pre-Summit press conference in Toronto and an international press conference at the 2008 Hokkaido-Toyako Summit: both firsts for the G8RG.
Noted for her exceptional ability to bring together students with similar interests in achieving common goals, Sarah has served as student director of Lawyers Feed the Hungry at Trinity College (2005-2008), where she coordinated student volunteers providing warm meals to the city’s homeless at the Upper Canada Law Society. She has also coordinated an Environmental Networking Fair for U of T’s annual Environment Week during which she brought together on- and off-campus groups with a shared commitment to environmental sustainability.
As vice-president and then co-president of the English Students’ Union (ESU) she brought new life to Idiom, the only academic journal for English undergraduates on campus and led the organization of a range of popular community-building events including visits to local theatres and the popular “Poetry Massacre” which challenged students to define “bad” poetry by presenting and performing their own.
“I have the highest respect for Sarah’s abilities, and should add that she is also extremely likeable, with that important gift of getting on with all kinds of people,” wrote Orchard, in his letter supporting Sarah’s nomination. “In short, Sarah cares, and does so in thoughtful and thought-provoking ways.”
The Dean’s Student Leadership Award recognizes an Arts & Science student who has played a significant leadership role in his or her extracurricular activities and in so doing has had a demonstrable impact on improving the quality of student experience at the University of Toronto. Any undergraduate or graduate student who currently enrolled in a degree program in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the St. George campus is eligible.