Published on May 14, 2025

Toomey awarded most prestigious undergraduate honor in CSCU system

Ryan Toomey with Eastern President Dr. Karim Ismaili at the Barnard Scholar Awards Banquet

Ryan Toomey, a senior math major and University Honors Scholar, was awarded the Henry Barnard Distinguished Student Award, the most prestigious honor given by the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system.

12 outstanding college seniors who attend Central, Eastern, Southern, and Western Connecticut State Universities are honored each academic year by the CSCU Foundation during the annual Henry Barnard Distinguished Student Awards Banquet, which has been held in the spring for 10 years.

These students have maintained a 3.7 grade-point average and have a record of substantial voluntary service to their universities and communities. Each student was selected by his or her respective university and often become leaders who make a difference in our communities.

The award is named for Henry Barnard, the first U.S. commissioner of education and a distinguished Connecticut educator, who was the state’s first superintendent of schools and principal of what later became Central Connecticut State University.

For his honors thesis, Toomey worked with education professor Dr. Sudha Swaminathan, who served as his faculty mentor. Toomey's thesis, titled "A Comparative Study on how Board Games Affect Monolingual and Bilingual Preschoolers’ Math Abilities," utilized the resources of the Center for Early Childhood, including its video editing technology and its adjacent preschool, to study the impact of board games on the math abilities of bilingual preschool children.

Outside of his academics, Toomey also played on Eastern's men's soccer team and served as the team's community engagement coordinator for Willimantic since 2023. In this role, he coordinated more than 13 community events, totaling more than 500 service hours.

Toomey worked as a research assistant at the CECE and was a recipient of the Jeffrey and Nancy Trawick-Smith Early Childhood Undergraduate Research Award in 2024. Toomey aims to become a secondary math teacher and will earn a master’s degree in secondary education from Eastern in the 2025-26 academic year.