National recruitment record earns Bates student a leadership award

Nathaniel Walton ’08, chair of the Maine College Republicans, has received the Richard M. and Helen DeVos Freedom Center Award for Student Leadership from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

Walton received the award during the institute’s National Leadership Conference on Saturday, April 22, in Indianapolis. He received the award for making Maine the top state in recruiting ISI members during the 2005-06 academic year, and for his efforts in promoting the values of American freedom on Maine college campuses.

Bringing together students and faculty from across the United States, the conference was dedicated to Milton Friedman, author of the book Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 1962), and his insights into the role of competitive capitalism as a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom.

“I was honored by the opportunity to attend the 2006 ISI National Leadership Conference and was humbled that ISI presented me with the 2006 DeVos Freedom Center Award,” said Walton, of Marblehead, Mass.

Walton was unanimously elected to a second term as state chair of the Maine College Republicans during the organization’s state convention on April 8.

Based in Wilmington, Del., the Intercollegiate Studies Institute was founded in 1953 to promote among American college youth a better understanding of the economic, political and spiritual values that sustain a free and virtuous society. ISI has volunteer representatives at more than 900 colleges, and more than 50,000 ISI student and faculty members on virtually every campus in the country.

ISI conducts more than 300 educational programs on campuses each year, offers graduate fellowships to aspiring college teachers and circulates more than half a million copies annually of its major publications.