Four Washington and Lee 2015 graduates commissioned as U.S. Army officers

Four Washington and Lee University students have been commissioned as officers in the U.S. Army after receiving their undergraduate degrees at Commencement on May 28.

Three of the four — Joshua J. Paldino, of Berlin, Connecticut; Robert H. Riley, of Atlanta; and Naphtali D. Rivkin, of Teaneck, New Jersey — earned the Distinguished Military Graduate designation for high scholarship, evidence of high moral character, military aptitude, and demonstrated leadership ability and rank in the top 20 percent of Army ROTC graduates nationwide. Paldino ranked in the top 10 percent.

A fourth, Zachary R. Arnold, of Keizer, Oregon, won an F. Edward Hébert Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship, which pays full tuition for any accredited medical, dental, veterinary, psychiatric nurse practitioner, psychology or optometry program, plus a generous monthly stipend of more than $2,000.

Rivkin, an English and Russian area studies major, was recently awarded a Fulbright research grant for study in Latvia on the country’s resistance to postwar domination by the Soviet Union. He and Arnold, a biochemistry major, are members of Phi Beta Kappa. Riley, a geology major, won W&L’s Geology Department Award in 2012. Paldino, a politics and economics double major, is a member of Pi Sigma Alpha Political Science Honor Society.