Students and faculty celebrated the annual Religious Studies awards on Monday, June 1, with the recent tradition of potato taquitos, Jarritos sodas and faculty remarks for winning students.
New Certificate in Religions and Cultures
Valeria Laguna (pictured with Prof. Brianne Donaldson) along with Dylan Moorhead and Erick Alonzo (not pictured) are the first cohort of recipients for the certificate. Students complete the three-course sequence RS 5A Judaism, Christianity and Islam; 5B Religions of Asia, and 5C Religious Dialogue.
Betsy Tang and Kent W. Ho Award in Religious Studies
Jenny Nguyen Hang ('28) and Avelyn Ellis ('26) (pictured with Prof. Christina Ghanbarpour) each received a $500 financial support gift for their Buddhist studies essays. This essay award was a donor gift from Roland Ho—who now serves as UCI Vice Chancellor of Strategic Philanthropy, in honor of his parents for an essay in Buddhist Studies.
Awards and Certificate in Jain Studies
Jordan Stanley ('26 Philosophy) completed the new Certificate in Jain Studies and Nonviolence by completing two required courses in Jain Studies and a relevant third course, along with a short essay placing the three courses into dialogue.
Shri Parshvanath Presidential Award for Achievement in Jain Studies
Aashika Doshi ('26 Film & Media Studies) received this award for her work in two Jain Studies courses. In Nonviolent Theories and Practice, Aashika compared two case studies in the Global Nonviolence database wherein women worked to stop environmental catastrophes in post-Independence India: The Chipko tree-hugging movement wherein rural women used their bodies to hug trees to stop governmental and corporate deforestation in northern Indian and the central Indian “Save the Narmada River” campaign to stop dozens of dams that displaced over 300,000 people who made their life and living on the river. In Jain History, Philosophy and Ethics, Aashika analyzed a possible Jain response to the U.S. war on Iran, exploring a unique facet of Jain karma theory, and a particular Jain account of virodi-hiṃsā, or violence of last resort. This achievement comes with a $300 award.
Shri Parshvanath Presidential Award for Achievement in Jain Studies & Applied Ethics
Karen Amavizca ('26 Philosophy and Spanish) was the 2025 winner of the Religious Studies' UCI New Approach (non-animal) Methodologies in Toxicology Testing research summer fellowship, funded through the Jain chair. In addition to this intensive fellowship, Karen completed the courses Animal Ethics and Religions as well as Crosscultural Medical Ethics in which she infused her emerging engagement with Jain Studies. In her final summary paper for the fellowship, Karen writes, “Western scientific practices uphold an individualistic approach to research . . . [where the aims] of personal and career goals are often the priority in these settings. Using distancing language and physical detachment, animal researchers are able to uphold animal testing as a standard and conduct their work as a positive and normal process. On the contrary, the application of Jain principles to professional settings shifts how some Jain medical professionals approach their work because their priorities focus on harm reduction and nonviolence rather than a separate personal achievement.” In her honors capstone project, Karen has applied her growing multispecies philosophical lens to a Spanish text to assess previously under-explored human-animal relations. This achievement comes with a $300 award.
Jordan and Karen are pictured with Prof. Brianne Donaldson.
School of Humanities Award in Religious Studies
Jett Hamil ('28 Religious Studies) was awarded the prestigious Humanities Award in Religious Studies for a promising scholar in the field. Jett is pictured here with Dr. Ozgür Koca. This achievement comes with a $1000 award.
Keith L. Nelson Awards
Maxwell Varahramyan & Josie Bitnes, both minors in Religious Studies, received the Keith L. Nelson Awards in Religious Studies, presented by Professor Joseph McKenna. Professor Keith Nelson co-founded religious studies at UCI in the early 1990s. A dedicated proponent of the study of religion in all its breadth and depth of cultural analysis, history, and lived elements, Nelson recognized the importance of religious studies for global and social fluency, and upon his retirement, he endowed an early achievement and promise award to encourage majors and minors in the study of religion. Each of this year’s awards come with $350 gift card. Josie and Maxwell are pictured here with Prof. McKenna.
Congratulations to all graduating seniors and awardees!