Barnard ’09, Chen ’09 win Pyne Prize

The Pyne Prize — an annual award given to one or more graduating seniors who have manifested exceptional scholarship, leadership and personal character — is the highest general award bestowed by the University upon an undergraduate.

Barnard, who also received this year’s Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship, said in an interview in December that he plans to pursue a master’s degree at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Worcester College in the University of Oxford.

Barnard served as president of the Princeton University Band and vice president of the Princeton Animal Welfare Society, which he co-founded. The Flagstaff, Ariz., native is a member of the Princeton Coalition Against Capital Punishment and the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Chen is a co-founder of the Student Design Agency. In 2007, the Shanghai native won the Martin A. Dale ’53 Summer Award, a stipend given to select students who plan to pursue special projects the summer after their sophomore year. Chen used the grant to train to become a yoga instructor at the Yoga Vidya Gurukul ashram in Nasik, India.

The Pyne Prize was established in 1921 as a memorial to the life and character of M. Taylor Pyne, a member of the Class of 1877 who served on the University Board of Trustees from 1885 to 1921. The Pyne Prize consists of a cash prize equivalent to a full year’s tuition. Each recipient will receive half.