Shaler Area student news for the week of April 23, 2024

Slippery Rock University recognized several students at its annual Celebration of Achievement awards ceremony, April 2, in the Smith Student Center Ballroom, highlighted by the announcement of SRU’s nominee for the Syed Ali-Zaidi Award for Academic Excellence.

Kelli Galbraith, a senior mathematics major, is SRU’s finalist for the Ali-Zaidi award, which is given to a graduating senior in Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education who exemplifies academic excellence and involvement. A selection committee appointed by the State System chancellor reviews all nominees’ accomplishments and selects a winner. The winner will receive $1,000 and will be announced later this month. The award was established by Syed Ali-Zaidi, a charter member of the PASSHE Board of Governors.

Galbraith has a 4.0 grade-point average and presented two research projects in three states earlier this year, including a presentation on fractal dimension applied to human iris recognition, presented at the 2024 Joint Mathematical Meeting, and a case study for support vector machines, decision tree and random forest, presented at the 2023 North American Power Symposium. Last summer, she was an intern with the U.S. Department of Energy Omni Technology Alliance at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Galbraith is also involved with the SRU Honors College and the Math Club and Delight Christian Ministries at SRU.

She plans to pursue her master’s degree at SRU in secondary education and enter a teaching career in education at the secondary or college levels.

Dale Ballard was named to Ohio University’s provost’s list for the fall 2023 semester. He is a student at the Russ College of Engineering and Technology. Logan Deluca and Charlie Lusk made the dean’s list at Ohio University for the same semester.