Dean Caroline Freund stood in the warm May evening at Javier's restaurant in La Jolla, surrounded by the scholars and policy minds of UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy, gathered to celebrate something the school had never quite done before: hold its annual awards ceremony off campus. On May 15, the GPS community came together not in a lecture hall or conference room, but in a place where students could breathe, celebrate, and truly see one another outside the pressures of coursework.
The ceremony honored what Freund herself put most plainly: "GPS students are smart and disciplined, and they care about the communities around them." But the night wasn't a simple acknowledgment of excellence. It was a recognition of how deeply connected this particular academic community has become — a place where cohorts are small enough that students know their professors by name, where peers inspire peers, and where the work of one person ripples across the entire school body.
The accolades spanned the full spectrum of what excellence means in global policy and strategy. Abraham Wu earned the Academic Achievement Award in the Master of Chinese Economic and Political Affairs program, while Kurt Johnson and Blaine Worthington took the same honor in the Master of International Affairs and Master of Advanced Studies in International Affairs tracks respectively. Ofri Mantell's perfect-or-near-perfect performance in the Master of Public Policy program rounded out those who achieved the highest grade point averages in their respective cohorts.
But academics were only the beginning. Rio Namegaya won recognition for producing the best empirical paper in econometrics — that rigorous discipline where numbers become clarity. Henry Zhou's analytical work earned the Ruth Adams Award, while Priyanka Pandey, still in her first year, impressed faculty with policy memo writing sharp enough to win university-wide recognition. Ikki Kubo and Warren Williams were honored for language mastery, the kind of fluency that opens doors across borders.
Leadership and character ran as a steady current through the awards. Katrina Haidari was voted by her peers to deliver the commencement address, a designation that speaks to how her classmates see her voice. Tiffany Liu received the Ayal Margalith Memorial Award — named in memory of a beloved GPS community member — for showing "leadership, excellence and devotion to the GPS student body." Rentaro Tajima was recognized by his cohort for "professionalism, scholarship, collegiality, integrity and service."
The ceremony also shined a light on those who make the school run and grow. Lauren Silver and Juan Morfin de la Parra won the Dean's Teaching Award for their work as tutors and teaching assistants, recognized by the students they helped. And Professor Craig McIntosh received the Faculty Recognition Award, voted on by the Class of 2026 for "significant impact on students" — the quiet measure of a teacher's reach.
What emerged from the evening was a portrait of a school that takes both intellectual rigor and community seriously. The GPS students being honored weren't isolated achievers but members of a constellation — people writing policy memos, mastering languages, analyzing data, building understanding across cultures, and lifting each other up in the process. As the school looks forward, these awardees are the ones leading the way.