Melissa Haig Receives Academic Achievement Award

2016 May 31

Melissa Haig of Levittown, NY, was one of 54 outstanding SUNY Oneonta students selected to receive a 2016 Academic Achievement Award this spring. Each academic department or program selected one to three outstanding seniors to receive the award.

Haig received the Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics Department award.

To be considered for the award, a student must have a minimum grade-point average of 3.5 in his or her major and must demonstrate exceptional academic improvement over four semesters, as well as excellence in research; leadership and involvement in department, campus and community activities; and/or participation in academic and/or professional situation outside the college.

Haig graduated one semester early, in December 2015, with a double major in mathematics and statistics and a minor in economics. She was awarded several scholarships throughout her undergraduate career, including a Presidential Scholarship, the Steven Edelstein ‘79 Scholarship, the Alex Mathematics Scholarship, the Fraley Statistics Scholarship and an Alumni Association Scholarship. As an involved student in the Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics Department, she had the opportunity to be a teaching assistant for introductory statistics, work as a statistics tutor and participate in a number of new student recruitment events. She was part of a mathematics independent study on “The History of Math in Our School’s Newspaper” as well as a large-scale statistics class project on campus safety. She and her peers presented both projects at the college’s Student Research Day. Haig also performed statistical analysis on a professor’s research, which granted her and her peers co-authorship of an article in a peer-reviewed journal. She passed Actuarial Exam P after taking an actuarial course at SUNY Oneonta. In April, she received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence.