USA College

Every spring since 1991, USA Today selects 20 students from across the country who not only excel in the academic environment, but who are also active on both campus and in their community to be a part of the All-USA College Academic First Team. The candidates must be juniors or seniors with high-grade point averages, honors, or awards, and must demonstrate great activity in student leadership.

With this criteria in mind, the 2009 winners represent a wide range of backgrounds and interests. For example, Kelly Zahalka, who attends the United States Naval Academy, is a competitive swimmer, and the first woman to graduate from the U.S. Navy Dive School in Pearl Harbor. Allen Cheng, from Harvard University, spent a summer managing a program distributing supplies to health clinics in Tanzania. He is also the president of the campus kendo club. Virgil Secasanu, on the other hand, developed a device that improved treatment methods for a type of cardiac disorder for his senior thesis at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

USA Today also selected a second and third team of students, which includes Henry Donaghy, of the U.S. Naval Academy, who is researching an electron beam weapon, and Jason Young, from Miami University, who helped Peruvian indigenous Amazonians gain title to their ancestral lands. In addition to listing the winners, USA Today also published a list of “honorable mentions,” and gives each student a cash award of $2,500.

The students are chosen by a panel of judges, who review hundreds of nominations sent in by colleges and universities across the country. The judges for 2009 were Frank J. Balz of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), Robin Burns of the American Association of University Professors, Penelope Earley from George Mason University, and Christie Garton, a publisher and author who was on the 2001 All-USA College Academic First Team.

The awards are co-sponsored by the NAICU, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the American Council on Education, and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Susan Weiss, managing editor of USA Today’s Life section, stated that “We’re delighted to honor such a multi-talented group of achievers.” A press release from John Hilkirk, the paper’s editor, echoed Weiss’s sentiments, saying that USA Today was “pleased to be able to honor academic excellence and community service throughout the country.”