Three seniors win 2026 Global Citizenship Award

If you ask Ben Koop about his time at Goshen College, he would rather tell you about his doubts than his accolades — the tense moments, the leadership roles he felt unready for and the life questions he still can’t answer. To him, that is the whole point. He believes global citizenship isn’t a finished identity you arrive at. It is the opposite: staying open to people and ideas unlike your own and letting them change you. He calls it “an orientation towards otherness, the possibility of newness.”

A senior from Waterloo, Ontario, Koop is an English major and has minors in history and studio art. His accomplishments extend beyond the classroom: he has captained the men’s volleyball team, served as a leader and peer educator as part of the campus Prevention Intervention Network leadership and helped found the Peace & Justice Collective on campus. Earlier this year, he attended the 2026 Modern Language Association international conference, a major annual gathering of language and literary scholars, educators and graduate students. In addition to his extracurriculars, Koop is dedicated to his liberal arts studies, having completed several independent studies, including courses in critical theory, philosophy and Hindi.

When Summer Cuatepotzo Perez learned about her nomination for the Global Citizenship Award, she was initially stunned. “What did I do to deserve this award?” she thought. It’s a telling question from someone who describes herself as a “silent leader.” Little by little, the senior is learning to quiet that doubt and trust the voice in her head that starts conversations with, “This is what I think.”

That voice has carried her far. Before enrolling at Goshen, Cuatepotzo Perez spent two years working full-time to save for college, then earned a full-ride scholarship. Today she is pursuing a sustainability management major and a sociology minor while working toward her Master of Business Administration, with a course load that now tops 100 credits. She takes it all in stride: “I believed that God had a plan for me.”

For Cuatepotzo Perez, that plan looks like service. As Latino Student Union treasurer, she helped collect donations and build the community relationships that made planning and putting on a quinceañera for more than 100 local guests possible. During a May Term off-campus class experience in Alabama, she had the opportunity to serve and learn with Mennonite Disaster Service and turned data from the classroom into faces and stories, opening her eyes to the devastating toll natural disasters take on a community. As a student, she makes the most of her academics, exploring everything from the arts to the sciences, and she understands the value of both asking for and giving help, never hesitating to guide a peer through a difficult concept.

Most of all, Cuatepotzo Perez shows a deep care for those around her — she remembers your name, she smiles when she sees you and she stops to ask how you’re doing. Her takeaway is modest but worth remembering: “Starting small gives us hope and it inspires others to do the same, and to spread change.”

Angelica Garcia-Ponce learned early what it costs to speak up. As a child, she and her mother survived domestic violence, and she grew up facing discrimination that might have taught her to stay silent. Instead, she became an advocate. The daughter of immigrants and a survivor herself, the senior social work major has spent her time at Goshen College turning her hardest experiences into a voice for others.

As a student, Garcia-Ponce has had the opportunity to speak about Latino education in a Telemundo documentary, serve in Latino Student Union leadership for two years — cooking, decorating and hosting cultural events for campus late into the night — and compete in the 2026 C. Henry Smith Oratorical Contest, where she named the dangers immigrant women face in domestic violence. Off campus, she volunteers at Beaman Home, a domestic violence shelter in her hometown of Warsaw that once helped her mother, translating resources for other immigrant women. She has also learned to lead with cultural humility through social work internships at Vista Community Healthcare Center and Cora Dale House, a community of support for adults with mental illness in Goshen.

Garcia-Ponce’s academic curiosity runs wide. Each year she makes a point of taking a class outside her comfort zone, from World Christianity to Pollinators in Peril — because, as she puts it, “learning is about experiencing growth.” Being a global citizen, she says, “is about building meaningful connections with others, respecting lived experiences, identities and perspectives.”