PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Commissioner Mike Aresco has announced that former East Carolina swimmer Julien Dodu and former Tulsa rower Hannah Emnett have been chosen as the winners of the Commissioner’s Postgraduate Leadership Awards by the American Athletic Conference Academic Affairs Committee.
The awards are given to one male and one female student-athlete from an American Athletic Conference-sponsored sport who have been admitted to a degree-granting or professional program for the following year and who have demonstrated leadership through excellence in academic credentials, athletic performance and depth of commitment to service within the institution or the community.
Dodu and Emnett will each receive a $5,000 scholarship, which may be applied to postgraduate study.
Dodu, who hails from Oshawa, Ontario, graduated from East Carolina with a multidisciplinary studies degree in neuroscience, physics and psychology and plans to pursue a Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology. He anchored East Carolina’s 800-yard freestyle relay squad, which set a pool record at the 2016 American Athletic Conference Swimming and Diving Championship in Houston, finished as the conference runner-up in the 400 individual medley and took third in the 500 freestyle. Dodu was a member of three consecutive conference championship-winning 800 freestyle relay squads and helped East Carolina win back-to-back American Athletic Conference team titles.
Aside from his academic and athletic pursuits, Dodu has volunteered more than 140 hours to organizations such as Swim Across America and the East Carolina Neuroscience Association.
Emnett, a native of Imperial, Missouri, graduated from Tulsa with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and will pursue a doctorate in that discipline at Northwestern. She is a two-time all-conference second team selection who has helped Tulsa to back-to-back second-place finishes at the American Athletic Conference Championships. She rowed in the Golden Hurricane’s varsity eight, which took second in 2016, and in the varsity four, which was the 2015 runner-up.
Emnett won the Sidney Bom Award for outstanding achievement in mechanical engineering and was the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 2016. Her extensive community service outreach includes volunteering with the Little Lighthouse Community, the Oklahoma Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity and Meals of Love.