ROSEMONT, Ill. – Penn State student-athletes Florence Caron and Ben Liscum have been selected as the recipients of the 2025 Big Ten Postgraduate Scholarships, the conference announced Monday afternoon.
Student-athletes must have maintained at least a 3.2 grade-point average (GPA), demonstrated leadership qualities, served as an excellent role model and intended to continue their academic work beyond their baccalaureate degree at a graduate degree program.
Senior women’s track and field athlete, Florence Caron, has been a standout student-athlete both in the classroom and on the track. She has collected six All-America honors between cross country, indoor, and outdoor track while at Penn State and owns a perfect 4.0 cumulative GPA as a linguistics major.
Caron became Penn State’s first country All-American since 2016 at the 2024 NCAA Cross Country National Championships. Her Penn State career All-American accolades include outdoor 5,000m (2025), the outdoor 10K (2024, 2025), the indoor 5,000m (2025) and indoor DMR (2024). Her success in the classroom earned her second-team Academic All-American honors in 2024 and she is in the running for Academic All-America honors once again this year.
Men’s soccer defender Ben Liscum has started 31 of his 50 career appearances for the Nittany Lions, scoring three goals and tallying two assists as a defender on the men’s soccer team. He was served as one of two captains in 2024.
The recent graduate is a two-time Big Ten Sportsmanship Award honoree and has thrice been named Academic All-Big Ten. He was honored as an NCAA Postgraduate Scholar earlier this year. He finished his undergraduate career with a 3.7 GPA as a finance major.
In addition to his athletic and academic success, Liscum is a major contributor in the team’s efforts with local elementary schools, where the group reads to and plays with the students. In terms of SAAC, he served as the organization’s president this past year, where helped organize an event with the State College/PSU Police Department for Toys for Tots. He also volunteered a great deal of time last year as THON Chair for men’s soccer and helped organize Athlete Hour and Pep Rally at THON Weekend 2024. He put on the annual Lip Sync Battle for student athletes. He spearheaded the efforts for $80,000 raised for THON from SAAC. He participated in Athletics Trick or Treating event at Beaver Stadium. He also volunteered during the Athletic’s Replay event in April where community comes into Multi Sport to interact and play sports with different student athletes. He participated in a GiveB1G / Families for Families food collection drive to help the less fortunate. On top of that he has done other engagement activities with SAAC and connecting our SAs to each other and their teams.
Liscum will return to Happy Valley in the fall of 2025 to pursue his masters in finance while using his final year of eligibility as a repeat captain for the men’s soccer team.