Congratulations to all nominees for the 2016 RLL Outstanding Senior Award, including to this year’s recipient, Blake Cooper. Blake graduates summa cum laude with a BA in Spanish and Linguistics. As a UB student he presented original research on the semiotics of the poetry of Federico García Lorca at UB’s Celebration of Academic Excellence (where he was awarded a blue ribbon) and SUNY’s first Undergraduate Research Conference. He also traveled to Argentina (Summer 2015) to work as an intern with a consulting firm specializing in cultural competency education. In his spare time he translated a novel by an Argentine author, which he later submitted for publication with the help of UB faculty, and helped prepare articles for publication on disability in Haiti.