Over 500 students will be honored for academic achievement tonight at the Scholars and Leaders Award Recognition Ceremony in C.Y. Stevens auditorium at 7 p.m.

The top 2 percent of students by class in each college will be honored along with the top graduate by college and the top graduate by major or curriculum.

The top graduate by college is determined from graduates of last summer, fall and this spring, while the graduate by major is chosen only from students graduating now.

The registrar’s office determines which people are to be honored based primarily on GPA. Second-year seniors being honored also have to have earned more than 28 credits from Iowa State in the last year to be honored two years in a row.

The ceremony is open to the public.

There also will be a presentation of high scholarship awards.

Three students this year will receive the Wallace E. Barron All-University Senior Award for outstanding achievement in academics and activities. They are Jodie Huddle, Anh Nguyen, and Kari Roehr, who will give a student response at the conclusion of the ceremony.

The W. Robert Parks and Ellen Sorge Parks Senior Scholarship Award will go to Andrew Lashier for his GPA and leadership. The Junior Student Leadership Award will be presented to Elizabeth K. Andre.

The keynote speaker at the presentation will be James Autry, who holds the Helen LeBaron Hilton Endowed Chair for Family and Consumer Sciences. Autry is a Fortune 500 company executive, a poet, and an author of five books who has “influenced leadership thinking in the U.S.,” Geni Greiner, Iowa State Special Events coordinator, said.

President Martin Jischke will speak, and afterward, the deans, dressed in their caps and gowns, will present certificates to students honored in their respective colleges.

Greiner said this year they are trying to make the event a more gala occasion by having an exceptional keynote speaker, having each student personally congratulated by Jischke and issuing special invitations to students’ families and to faculty and staff members selected by the students as having been particularly influential.

The ceremony will be followed by a reception with light refreshments.

“It will be a time for the students and faculty to meet each other, talk to each other, take pictures,” Greiner said.