It gives us great pleasure to announce that the winner of the 2020-21 John R. and Fawn T. Dunkle Geography Award is Mckenna Stidham. The Dunkle award honors the long-time service and devotion of Professor John R. Dunkle to the Department of Geography at the University of Florida. We give this award of $1000 annually to an undergraduate Geography major who shows sustained academic excellence, involvement in departmental and university activities, leadership and/or strong promise for graduate study.
Mckenna will be graduating this spring with a Bachelor of Sciences degree with a specialization in Medical Geography in Global Health and a minor in Chinese. She is currently a civic scholar at the UF Bob Graham Center for Public Service, researching geographic access to healthcare in Florida. During this pandemic, she acted as a spatial analyst in the COVID-19 research and development initiative supported by Ferreira Foundation to identify logistically isolated communities using GIS. She has been serving as a tutor and youth mentor for poor communities in Micanopy, a disaster team volunteer with the American Red Cross North Florida chapter, and an advocacy team volunteer for Doctors Without Borders. Mckenna will be attending medical school starting in the fall to start her graduate study with a specialization in population health. Congratulating Mckenna!