What with the war in Iraq, 9/11, and the race for president, the presidency—and, specifically, the reach of presidential powers—is a much-scrutinized, controversial topic among both academics and the general public. Yet Nathan Hitchen, a political science major at Rutgers–Camden, did not shy away from the topic when he approached his thesis, a 109-page paper titled “A Great Power: The American Executive and His Energy in War.” For Nathan, the project was more than just another academic assignment. The project was a chance to delve deeply into a matter with historical resonance and genuine relevance for the future.

“My thesis was that there is a fundamental ambivalence in the nature of the presidency,” says Nathan, who is from Mantua, New Jersey. “On the one hand, the president is checked by republican institutions like Congress and the rule of law enforced by the judiciary in times of peace. But in times of war emergency, the Constitution and executive precedent allow the president to exert powers which are almost extra-legal.”

And the results? As Nathan notes, “The success and perceived legitimacy of such exerted powers depend on the president’s abilities, disposition—and some good fortune.”

Nathan learned a lot from the project, traveling to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York, and otherwise digging deep into historical records and political theory. “I profited from the study in a number of ways,” he says. “It was my first time doing serious primary document research and systematically reading touchstone authors about a political science subject.” He earned the Jack Marvin Weiner Memorial Award for the best undergraduate thesis in political science.

Nathan earned other honors during his time at Rutgers. He was one of 50 of the country’s brightest undergraduates selected by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a nonprofit educational organization, for its Honors Program. As part of the program, Nathan traveled to Montana for the first in a series of conferences held throughout the year. Titled “Individual and Community in the Settling of America,” the weeklong conference brought the program’s fellows together for in-depth discussions on the founding of America. “For me, the Montana experience plugged me into a broader network of students so that we can discuss issues and query one another about our universities,” says Nathan, who also attended conferences in Providence, Chicago, San Antonio, and Indianapolis. “It was a fairly rigorous intellectual experience featuring daily lectures and discussion groups on books we’d been required to read over the summer.”

And next for Nathan? A fully funded, one-year fellowship at the John Jay Institute for Faith, Society, and Law in Colorado Springs, where he will be one of a dozen fellows spending the fall at the institute and the spring in an internship in Washington, D.C. After the fellowship, he plans to study international relations at St. Andrews University in Scotland, where he spent his junior year.