Anya Dunn honored with LeQuire Award
April 28, 2021
Anya Dunn ’21, a senior biochemistry major from Winston, Ga., was presented the distinguished LeQuire Award for the 2020-21 academic year.
Established in 1987 by descendants and friends of Maryville physician Granville Dexter LeQuire and his wife, Ellen Brickey LeQuire, the LeQuire Award includes a cash gift to help defray the expenses of applying to medical school and an engraved pewter julep cup.
The LeQuire Award is typically given out during the Academic Awards Ceremony, held every April in the Clayton Center for the Arts; however, the College could not hold the in-person event this year, due to COVID-19 guidelines for indoor gatherings. Instead, award recipients, along with recipients of this year’s Leadership Awards, were honored virtually, through videos posted on Maryville College’s official social media channels during the week leading up to the April 17 announcement (see the LeQuire Award video announcement below). Awards are being mailed to the recipients.
The recipient of the LeQuire Award is selected each year from among the graduating class by the president of Maryville College. Students are nominated by faculty members from the Humanities and Natural Sciences divisions.
In the nomination letter for the award, Dunn was praised for her “capacity to challenge herself, her ability to make connections across diverse subjects, and her deep desire to work well – and be useful – to others.”
Dunn has made the Dean’s List seven times (every semester since she enrolled at Maryville College in fall 2017), and she has two minors: American Sign Language and Deaf studies and health and wellness promotion.
“Her kindness and patience are appreciated by everyone she encounters,” the nominating faculty member wrote. “I rarely see such social/emotional maturity in students at this age. She has a true heart for helping others and has volunteered in many programs both on and off campus. She is very ‘low-key’ and adapts easily to complex situations.”
With plans to take a gap year before continuing her education in medicine, she hopes to eventually work in pediatrics. She has felt called to the medical profession since she was a child, the nomination letter states, and as the young daughter and sister of cancer patients, she said she “saw doctors in so many different capacities and the effects that a medical professional could have, both for good and for bad.”
While a student at Maryville College, she has worked at both Blount Memorial Hospital as a Technical PRN and at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital as a Child Life Intern and NICU Cuddler. An observation that she made while working at Children’s Hospital influenced her Senior Study. Getting to know children with Down Syndrome who had been diagnosed with acute leukemias, she was inspired to design a project that would add to the research on effective anti-cancer drugs.
“Our world needs more bright, compassionate, hard-working and conscientious medical professionals,” said Maryville College President Dr. Bryan F. Coker, who presented the award. “The Division of Natural Sciences – and the entire Maryville College community – is proud to have prepared Anya Dunn for a future of very important work.”
Dunn, a 2017 graduate of Central High School, also received the Liberal Arts Award, which recognizes students who earned the highest grade point average in all core courses taken at Maryville College. She also was a finalist for the 2021 Outstanding Senior Award (see video below), which is one of the most prestigious honors given a student. It recognizes a senior student who has been active in a broad range of activities, who most exemplifies the “ideal” Maryville College graduate and who has the potential to be an outstanding alumnus.