On Thursday, October 30, CALS celebrated four friends of the college at the annual Honorary Recognition Banquet and Ceremony.

This year’s honorees, pictured above with the CALS students who introduced them during the ceremony, were:

• William “Bill” Kennedy, Distinguished Alumni Award
• Thomas “Tom” Kennedy, Distinguished Alumni Award
• Dantrell Cotton, Distinguished Recent Graduate Award
• Maya Warren, Distinguished Recent Graduate Award

A link to an online album with photos from the awards program will be added here when available.

In our family, 30 people have attended the University of Wisconsin. That’s brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, great nieces and there are more coming. Those people were extremely instructive in helping us find our way. There’s a lot of badger here, and this award, it’s really humbling.

Bill Kennedy

When I was junior in high school, I was getting all these flyers about schools. My dad he looked at me and said, “There’s a world class university 10 miles away. Why would you go anywhere else?” And I took his advice. It was the best advice I’ve ever had.

Tom Kennedy

I’d always been someone who was curious about how my families made sense of the spaces they occupied, and that curiosity led to me asking a lot of questions. When I was in class, it was the perfect place to ask those questions. So I fell in love with academics and research.

Dantrell Cotton

When I think of where it all began, it was the basement of Babcock Hall. I want to take what I learned there and share it with the world. I love spreading the knowledge of ice cream, but spreading joy is what I’m really after. Because ice cream is more than food – it’s pure joy in frozen form.

Maya Warren