BLOOMINGTON, Ill.— Senior Lauren Contorno has been selected as Illinois Wesleyan University’s recipient of the 2011 Lincoln Academy of Illinois Student Laureate Award. The award recognizes outstanding academic achievement and extracurricular activities among college seniors
Contorno and 50 fellow student laureates were honored in a ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 5 at the Old State Capitol State Historic Site in Springfield, Ill. Accompanied to the event by Associate Provost for Academic Planning and Standards Frank Boyd, Contorno received a Student Laureate Medallion, an honorarium check and certificate of achievement.
A native of Elburn, Ill., Contorno is a political science major at IWU and in the spring of 2011, she studied in a general studies program at The Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy. This past summer, she was a Catastrophe Services Intern at State Farm Insurance Company in Bloomington where she researched and wrote an extensive report detailing the correlation between climate change and severe storm trends and its possible effects on the insurance industry. Contorno, among other responsibilities, also wrote an all-department summary outlining State Farm’s catastrophe response plan.