A ceremony in Leavey Library on May 10 honored more than 60 exceptional students whose names soon will be etched in glass on the Wall of Scholars.

Surrounded by the names of past honorees, USC president C. L. Max Nikias, USC Libraries dean Catherine Quinlan and Skull and Dagger Society president Jerry Papazian joined hundreds of family members, friends, faculty and staff in congratulating the graduating students.

The Skull and Dagger Society, USC’s oldest honor society, created the Wall of Scholars in 1995. Each spring, the names of students who have been awarded a national or international scholarship, or who have earned certain USC academic accolades, are added to the wall’s glass panels in the library’s Weingart Reading Room.

Papazian welcomed the crowd and secured a round of applause “for a group that rarely gets acknowledged publicly: the parents and other family members who have been so supportive to our students.”

Emphasizing the rarity of the distinction, Nikias called the students’ inclusion on the Wall of Scholars “a tremendous tribute to your exceptional talents, your passion for knowledge and your dedication to scholarship.”

He said: “You are now part of a very select group of outstanding students whose accomplishments will always be recorded in this prominent place. When you return to campus in a few months or a few years or a few decades, you can always return to this place in this room. And when you do, you can proudly show your friends and your families, and even your own children or grandchildren, that you have a special place in the history of academic excellence in this university.”

Quinlan noted that Leavey Library, which students visit more than 1 million times each year, is a fitting place to honor the academic success of USC students.

“This is our only library that is open 24 hours a day, so I know that many of the students with us today know this library particularly well,” she said. “The Weingart Reading Room is one of our most popular study places on campus, and if you walk through at 3 o’clock in the morning, it is full. That’s a testament to the quality of our students, and why we are honoring so many today.”

The 2012 Wall of Scholars honorees include:

Valedictorian: Genevieve Hoffman

Salutatorians: J. “Ryan” Hill and Sonam Ghanshyam Kapadia

Fulbright Graduate Study and Research Abroad grant recipients: Caitlin Bradbury, Nelly Chavez, Huibin A. Chew, Joanne J. Cho, Sarah Goodrum, Ayushi Gummadi, Nina Gordon-Kirsch, Christine Lee, Daniel Paly, Teddy “Edward” Raven and Michael Shashoua

Truman Scholar: Travis Glynn

Goldwater Scholar: Matthew Orr

Andrew W. Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship recipients: Sarah J. Butler, Nelly Chavez, Jennifer Escobar and Wanjiku Karanja

Steven and Kathryn Sample Renaissance Scholars Program recipients: Julie A. Guerin, Sonam Ghanshyam Kapadia, Lauren Maldonado, Cody Shaw Nelson, Tran Bao Nguyen, Noa Oldak, Michael Salvatore, Dorothy Wang, Gregory Woodburn and Alexandria Yen

Global Scholars: Michelle Ackerman, Erin Cuevas, Theodore Curran, Isabelle M. Feldhaus, Katherine N. Finnegan, Sequoia Kaul, Scott J. Macklin, Michael Shashoua, Jena Sussex and Rachel Will

Discovery Scholars: Enoch Chow, Lei “Lisa” Cui, Landry Doyle, Emily Gee, Alexander Hofmann, Kevin Maloney, Philip Meyer, Elizabeth Nonemaker, Brien O’Loughlin, Zlatan Sehovic and Courtney Whang

University Trustees: J. Ryan Hill and Cody Shaw Nelson

Emma Josephine Bradley Bovard Award recipients: Sonam Ghanshyam Kapadia, Ashley Michelson and Jeannie Y. Zhang

Rockwell Dennis Hunt Scholastic Award: Emily Chin

Dean Joan Metcalf Schaefer Scholarship recipients: Jasneet Aulakh, Michael L. Carlson, Samantha Coxe, Zhisen Jiang, Ana Paulina Lee, Thien-Huong Ninh, Andres Park, Abhinav Prem, Kevin Rutkowski, Alison Spirito, Rebecca S. Wertman and Erli Zhou

Arnold S. Dunn Renaissance Scholarship for the Sciences, Arts and Humanities: Ruth M. Madievsky

J. Welsey Robb Endowed Scholarship in Human Values: Tori Holland and Jeffery A. Spurgin

The names also have been added to the USC Libraries’ virtual Wall of Scholars. The site provides the physical location for all the names on the wall.

More stories about: Academic Highlights, Awards, Commencement, Commencement 2012