Ten University of Iowa students, faculty, staff, and alumni received awards April 16 at the 107th Finkbine Dinner Celebration. Sara Sanders, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, hosted the program, and Executive Vice President and Provost Kevin Kregel presented the awards, including the Hancher-Finkbine Medallions and Distinguished Student Leader Certificates.

The Hancher-Finkbine Medallions represent leadership, learning, and loyalty, and were presented to students Vera Barkosky, Mitch Winterlin, Ben Linden, and Riley Post; faculty member Miriam Landsman; staff member Rick Nicely; and alumnus Andrew Code.

Students Harper Dunne, Matthew McDonnell, and Zachary Graham were awarded with Distinguished Student Leader Certificates.

In 1917, William Finkbine and Carl Kuhnle hosted the first awards dinner to recognize contributions of men in the UI student, faculty, and staff community. In 1921, Finkbine’s daughter, Dorothy Finkbine Souers, and her aunts introduced a similar dinner for women. The events were combined in 1972 and are supported by an endowment established by the elder Finkbine, as well as other alumni, friends, and the UI Center for Advancement.

Hancher-Finkbine Medallion recipients

Undergraduate students

Vera Barkosky

Barkosky is a political science and ethics and public policy major from Ames, Iowa. Her accomplishments and service to the university are many, including serving as Undergraduate Student Government’s vice president and as a member of the Well-Being Collaborative’s Food Insecurity and Basic Needs Subcommittee. She received student government’s David L. Grady Joint Exemplary Service Award, an honor that recognized her outstanding work in ensuring positive outcomes for all UI students. She was the 2022 homecoming parade director, has participated in an undergraduate research fellowship, and has been actively engaged in the Disaster, Migration, and Violence Lab that combines her interests in policy and research and international systems.

Mitch Winterlin

Winterlin is a psychology and social studies education major from Bettendorf, Iowa. As the Undergraduate Student Government president, he worked to secure funding for a therapy dog in the Office of the Dean of Students and helped implement and distribute cup covers and Birdie alarms to increase campus safety for students. He founded the 2023 Most Promising New Student Organization, Paws at Iowa. He served as Homecoming 2023’s vice president of equity, a resident assistant, a member of the University Counseling Service Student Advisory Board, and a peer mentor within Iowa’s First Gen Hawks Program. He also is a member of the university’s honors program. 

Graduate students

Ben Linden

Linden is a fourth-year medical student in Carver College of Medicine. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in biochemistry, with honors, and a certificate in public health from Iowa. Serving as the student body president within the Carver College of Medicine, he represents his classmates to the college. His leadership and commitment to service helped earn him selection to the Gold Humanism Honor Society. He has been an active and productive researcher with projects ranging from basic science to firearm safety. He has completed several publications, abstracts, and national presentations, earning him research awards and recognition, including the 2023 International Society for Agricultural Safety and Health Student Research Award. He will graduate from the Carver College of Medicine in May with distinction in research and health delivery science, management, and policy. 

Riley Post

Post, from Blue Grass, Iowa, is a graduate fellow pursuing a PhD in civil and environmental engineering. His research focuses on fighting floods through a technique called distributed storage. He was awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. He is a Dare to Discover research campaign honoree and was the winner of Iowa’s Three Minute Thesis in 2022. He served as the 2021-22 vice president for Graduate and Professional Student Government and was also the Graduate Council representative during that time. He will continue his research and work as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. 

Faculty and staff

Miriam Landsman

Landsman is the director of the School of Social Work and an associate professor at Iowa. She also is the executive director of the National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice. Over the past 30 years, Landsman has been awarded more than 100 external grants and contracts to sustain the center. These awards have supported her scholarship and practice in child welfare, and also have supported the work of hundreds of faculty, students, and staff. She serves as the co-director of the Iowa Consortium for Substance Abuse Research and Evaluation. Her primary areas of research are family-centered approaches to child welfare practice and development of the child welfare workforce. 

Rick Nicely

Nicely is a custodian II and has served the Iowa Memorial Union for 25 years and the Division of Student Life for more than 30 years. He was the 2019 IMU Values Ingenuity Award recipient and is a leader among the custodial services team in the IMU. On a typical day, you may find Nicely providing way-finding information to campus visitors, carrying guests’ suitcases to the Iowa House Hotel, helping a student organization arrange a room for an upcoming meeting, or developing new strategies for how to care for and clean the student union. Working for the university is a point of pride for Nicely. He understands that his contributions provide a healthy and vibrant environment for students, one that fosters success and enhances the student experience. 

Alumni

Andrew Code

Code is a business innovator, global health advocate, and founder, partner, and chairman of Promus, a private equity investment firm. Code has more than 30 years of experience investing and growing more than 300 middle-market companies. During his career, he has served as a board member and advisor to numerous public and private companies. Before founding Promus, he was a founder and longtime partner of CHS Capital, a middle-market private equity firm. Before that, he was vice president of Citicorp’s Leveraged Capital Group in Chicago. He is president of the Code Family Foundation, a founder and chair of Chicago Fellowship, and is the chair of the UI Center for Advancement Board of Directors. He holds a BBA in finance and an MBA from Iowa. Along with his wife, Susan, he established the Code Family Foundation in 1997. Through it, they generously support programs and scholarships in business, nursing, and international programs at Iowa. 

Honorary medallion

Andy Piro

Piro, assistant director of athletics in charge of special projects, was awarded an honorary medallion.