Gerald Bazer Award Recipient Experiences ‘Amazing Transformation’ at Owens
Lawson Mazur will not only graduate in spring 2025, but he’s also earned top honors after being named the Gerald Bazer Award recipient as the outstanding arts and sciences graduate.
Ask him how or why he received the award, and he’s not quite sure. This line on the award announcement clears it up, though: “Lawson Mazur has undergone an amazing transformation at Owens.”
That much is plainly apparent. Mazur came to Owens without a career direction he wanted to follow, and now he’ll enroll at The Ohio State University in the fall to study computer graphics and game design. His goal is to become a video game designer.
“I’ve never won an award for my academics, so it’s nice to win one, especially at the college level,” Mazur said. “It adds something extra to graduating and getting a degree.”
He also said winning the award gives him extra motivation and confidence heading to Columbus.
“I would definitely say yes,” Mazur said. “It’s an extra accomplishment and gives me the confidence to know I’ve worked hard enough in my academic career that I can go on to a four-year and feel comfortable.”
The Gerald Bazer Award recognizes one student each semester majoring in Arts and Sciences with a minimum GPA of 3.5 who has demonstrated exceptional scholarship and achievement at Owens Community College.
After graduating from Genoa High School, Mazur took some time off to figure out what he wanted to do. He went to an open house at Owens and met with an advisor, who looked at his test scores, listened to what interested him and directed him to the Applied Science program.
“I had a lot of meetings with advisors,” Mazur said. “I was never into the idea of a career, like I didn’t want to spend my whole life working for some company and not doing anything else. At the end of it, it came down to what am I OK with doing. Video games are something I’ve always played and been interested in.”
As the old saying goes, if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.
Mazur said his experience at Owens has been great. In fact, he’d suggest coming to Owens to anyone who is unsure of what they want to do in life and take advantage of the resources, advisors and instructors who make this a “good lift-off point.”
“I’m happy I decided to come here instead of a four-year (school) while being undecided,” Mazur said. “This was a better path to go.
“My mom had asked me what I wanted to do since my junior year of high school. Her and my sister told me to come to Owens and start here because it would be cheaper and I could stay home. I’d say it definitely worked out.”
Published May 2025