Created in 1961 by the Indiana Memorial Union Board of Directors, the Herman B Wells Distinguished Senior Award honors one outstanding senior who has excelled academically and is an established leader within the IU community.
Academic Accomplishments
Lauren Meadows exemplifies the spirit of Herman B Wells. A Herman B Wells Scholar and Phi Beta Kappa Initiate, Lauren Meadows will graduate with highest distinction with a Bachelor of Arts from the College of Arts of Sciences. She will graduate with majors in Political Science, History, and Spanish, and a minor in Law & Public Policy in the O’Neill School. She is a departmental honors candidate in Political Science and History, and will receive a Hutton Honors Notation from the Hutton Honors College. Her honors thesis in History and Political Science focuses on 1970s Senate committee reform and civic participation in the constitutional amendment process, respectively.
In addition to her academic engagements, Lauren spent summers interning for Senator Joe Donnelly’s (D-IN) Indianapolis Office, Donnelly for Indiana Headquarters, and the Brennan Center for Justice in New York. She studied abroad twice – first for a summer internship program in the UK Parliament with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, and second for a semester in Madrid, Spain. While in Spain, Lauren worked for a local nonprofit focusing on sustainability education programming. Additionally, she accompanied Wells Program freshmen scholars on a 10-day trip to Belize, where scholars learned about sustainable activism and the Maya indigenous community. Lauren also worked as an undergraduate researcher for IU’s China Remixed programming, presenting a paper on enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for which she won a Provost’s Award for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity in 2018. Lauren’s academic and career interests lie at the intersection of democracy, governance, and civic participation, and she has primarily focused on how our public and private institutions can be reformed to better represent and serve the people.
Student Involvement
On campus, Lauren served as President of IU’s 98th Board of Aeons – a student research and advisory organization which advises President Michael McRobbie on issues of importance to the university. Lauren has managed the rollout of three large-scale research projects and has facilitated the onboarding and selection processes for the 99th Board. She has served the University on multiple committees, including the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education’s Honors Education Task Force and Student Advisory Board. Lauren served for several years on Indiana Model United Nations’ Board of Directors as Member Educator and as Under-Secretary General of Policy for IndianaMUNC V: a high school MUN conference with over 500 attendees from across the Midwest. Lauren’s Member Education curriculum overhaul helped facilitate an exponential rise in national rankings for IU’s travel team, which now sits at #15 in North America and #1 in the Big Ten Conference. Lauren served as a Crisis Line Volunteer at Bloomington’s Middle Way House and is a member of Alpha Xi Delta Sorority. During her time at IU, Lauren was also involved with Donnelly for Indiana’s Bloomington Field Office, the 2019 Homecoming Court, IU’s Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl Team, and Teter Boisen’s Leadership Council.
After Graduation
Lauren will be moving to Washington, D.C. in August, where she will work as one of 12 Gaither Junior Fellows at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Junior Fellows work as research assistants alongside Carnegie Senior Fellows, and Lauren will be working specifically with the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance program, analyzing political polarization and representation on a global scale.
Acknowledgements
Lauren had many members
of her community support her during her journey at IU. She said, “I am incredibly grateful to have an uncommonly supportive community of friends, faculty, and staff here at IU who have taught me so much and who have encouraged me to make the most of my four years here. I want to extend special thanks to the College of Arts and Sciences, namely the Political Science, History, and Spanish Departments, and to the Wells Scholars Program, who gave me a place to call home the moment I stepped on campus. And last but not least, thank you to my family (and to my friends who have become family) for your unconditional love — it means more than you know.”
