Katie Belt, a senior majoring in Geosciences and Chemistry, is the recipient of the 2025 Kurt Eisen Excellence in Liberal Arts Award. This is the highest student award given by the College of Arts and Sciences. In her Senior Thesis, Katie investigated the detrital zircon U-Pb provenance of Carboniferous siliciclastic rocks from the Southern Appalachian Basin in the Cumberland Plateau. While working on this project Katie learned and applied U-Pb zircon dating techniques and statistical analysis. Her research efforts culminated in an abstract submission to the Geological Society of America Connects 2024 conference in Anaheim, California, where she won the Sigma Gamma Epsilon Best Poster Award for excellence in design and scientific communication.