STANFORD, Calif. – Senior computer science major Ali Fauci was named the 2013-14 Pac-12 Scholar Athlete of the Year on Sunday.
“It is an incredible honor just to be a student-athlete at Stanford,” said Fauci. “It is exciting to be recognized by the Pac-12, but we have an incredible team of scholar-athletes who all deserve the honor as much as me.”
Fauci becomes the third Stanford women’s rower to be named Pac-12 Scholar Athlete of the Year, joining Marielle Higgins in 2011-12 and Erika Roddy in 2010-11.
"Ali is the total package," said head coach Yasmin Farooq. "She is a team leader, in our varsity eight and had above a 4.0 GPA. Rowing at this level is a major time commitment. She is a role model for every person on the team, the way she works hard at practice and in the classroom. She does it all right and we are really going to miss her."
This season Stanford has received the Pac-12 Scholar Athlete of the Year in six sports. The next most is Arizona with three. USC and Cal each have two. The Cardinal Scholar Athletes of the Year in 2013-14 are Fauci, Austin Hack (men’s rowing), Chiney Ogwumike (women’s basketball), Dwight Powell (men’s basketball), Ben Rhyne (football) and Tyler Stutzman (men’s cross country).
To be eligible for the Scholar Athlete of the Year award, an athlete must be a senior and on track to receive a degree, have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher, participate in at least 50 percent of the scheduled contests and be at their current institution for one year.
Fauci ended the winter quarter with an incredible GPA of 4.053. She is a two-time Pac-12 All-Academic honoree and two-time CRCA Scholar Athlete Award recipient. This year she was awarded the Terman Award given to the top 5 percent of seniors in the school of engineering. She earned the President’s Award for Academic Excellence her freshman year in 2011.
She is a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, the Cap and Gown Society of Women Leaders, the Women in Computer Science and the Cardinal Counsel SAAC. She was a junior class cabinet member at Stanford in 2012-13.
Fauci’s academic prowess has led to a job with Twitter. She will join the social media stalwart after the summer as a member of the software development team.
The final regatta for Fauci’s Stanford rowing career will take place in two weeks at the NCAA Championships in Indianapolis.