Penn Arts & Sciences has named 20 students from the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Liberal & Professional Studies, and the Graduate Division as 2022 Dean’s Scholars. This honor is presented annually to students who exhibit exceptional academic performance and intellectual promise.
 
Kate Nicole Hoffman (Philosophy) is a fourth-year doctoral student with strong research interests in environmental ethics, philosophy of science, climate change, and animal cognition. Her dissertation tackles broad questions of nature and the concept of the natural.  She received the Marjorie Grene Prize from the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology for her paper “Subjective Experiences in Explanations of Animal PTSD Behavior.” This paper, published in a special issue of Philosophical Topics, argues that criteria used to diagnose humans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are met by animals, who also suffer from such symptoms. Kate Nicole serves as the Climate Change Project Manager for the GalápagosEducation and Research Alliance, run by Michael Weisberg, Bess W. Heyman President's Distinguished Professor and Chair of Philosophy. She and Weisberg also co-designed a course on philosophy of climate change that was taught for the first time in Fall 2021.
 
You can find a full list of this year's Dean's Scholars HERE