Marilyn Gates ’26 and Laney Tullius ’28, two students who have founded organizations dedicated to helping others and creating community, have been honored this fall with the Franklin Miller Award.
Gates, who will graduate in December, is the founder of Writers After Class at Kenyon (WACK). The student organization launched last year and is dedicated to fostering low-pressure, low-commitment writing environments.
The goal, Gates said, is to give students an opportunity to write together without needing a reason, and its meetings take place at a variety of times in different places to make sure that they are available to everyone.
“Sometimes we have snacks, but other times the nourishment is the writing and community,” Gates said. “The popular imagination considers writing a solitary activity (but) some people just find it easier to write in community. … You’re creating alongside like-minded but different and passionate people.”
A poet who anticipates attending graduate school at some point, Gates also is a student associate at the Kenyon Review and president of the campus chapter of Active Minds, a mental health awareness organization. A New Jersey native, she is an English major with an emphasis in creative writing.
Gates was nominated for the award by William P. Rice Associate Professor of Literature Orchid Tierney, who called her a “kind and generous thinker who blends her creative and critical acuity so seamlessly together. … Marilyn Gates embodies Kenyon’s values of creativity and intellectual empowerment, fostering respect and integrity and meaningful connections.”
Creating connections is important to Tullius as well. A first-generation student from Barlow, Ohio, in rural Appalachia, she founded a program with the help of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to help first-generation students from Mount Vernon High School access higher education.
Called BEACON (Building Educational And College Opportunities Near Gambier), the new program aims to help high school seniors navigate the college application process through workshops that Tullius usually leads and one-on-one mentoring.
“This is a really pivotal time in a kid’s life,” Tullius said. “Any time that you put into something like this is worth it because you’re making such a tangible and meaningful difference.”
Tullius, who is considering majoring in English or neuroscience and wants to go to law school after Kenyon, also is a tutor at the Writing Center. She was nominated by Anna Scanlon, director of the Writing Center, who noted the broad impact of her work.
“Her dedication not only to our local Kenyon community but the broader Mount Vernon one is remarkable,” she said. “Her work as a tutor and a mentor is unparalleled. And her wisdom and kindness of spirit are unforgettable.”
The Franklin Miller Awards are given to students who make unusual or significant contributions to the academic environment of the College. The awards are named for Franklin Miller Jr., a longtime member of the faculty and a distinguished physicist, teacher and textbook author.
The awards were established by Edward T. “Chip” Ordman ’64, who credits receiving a modest, named award as a student with helping him get into graduate school. The award is meant to give that same small, but meaningful, encouragement to deserving students whose efforts and ingenuity make a difference in the life of the Kenyon community.
Nominations are accepted in September and March of each year.