AUK Student Receives USA Prestigious Student Leadership Award

AUK student, Alia Mustafa Aref became the first international student to win Sigma Tau Delta International English Society's prestigious Student Leadership Award. The award will be conferred at the organization's convention in Portland, OR, USA on March 22, 2013.

According to Dr. Sarah Dangelantonio, President of Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society, the Student Leadership Award is patterned after the Society's Delta Award, which recognizes Faculty Sponsors for outstanding service to Sigma Tau Delta at the international level. "We created this award to recognize and celebrate students who demonstrate commitment to the ideals of Sigma Tau Delta and who promote those ideals through a leadership role in their local chapters," Dangelantonio said.

The Sigma Tau Delta Board of Directors established the Student Leadership Award in 2008 to be presented to students for outstanding service to Sigma Tau Delta at the chapter level. Applicants may be nominated by the Chapter Sponsor or other chapter members. Aref was nominated by a unanimous vote of her chapter and by the American University of Kuwait's faculty sponsor, Dr. Kathy Nixon.

"Alia was one of the founding members of this chapter and has poured her heart into its success," Nixon said. "I am so proud of her and grateful that those who decide the recipients of this award have recognized her immense contribution here at AUK."

Aref has been secretary, vice president, and president of the organization at AUK in addition to organizer of its most successful book drive.

The Student Leadership Award includes a cash prize and a commemorative plaque. It has been awarded to one or two students annually since 2009. There have been a total of five recipients in previous years, according to the information compiled by the Sigma Tau Delta national office. Alia is one of two students to receive the award in 2013.

With this award, the chapter in Kuwait has swept all of the major individual and chapter awards it is qualified to win with the Sigma Tau Delta. In 2012 the chapter won a Service Award for its annual book drive for KACCH while Nixon won the Elaine J. Hughes Chapter Sponsor Award. In 2011 the AUK group won the Chapter of Year Award. And in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 the chapter has earned a Regent's Common Reader Award for its annual reading event held on the AUK campus.

The AUK Alpha Rho Eta chapter of Sigma Tau Delta was established in the fall of 2009 becoming the first chapter of this international honor society in the Middle East.

Current chapter president, Ayat Al Bloushi, whose essay was accepted to be read at the Portland convention, will accept the award in the US for Aref.

"Alia has been a constant supporter for me. Looking at her time as the president, I was inspired to become as outgoing and passionate as she was. It is a pleasurable challenge to try to maintain the respectable reputation that Alia helped to build." Al Bloushi said. "It is a privilege to accept the award on her behalf."

Released by the Office of Public Affairs on the 14th March 2013