Dominican University of California Lacrosse

Meet some of our new Penguins. Dominican has welcomed 279 academically talented, socially conscious, creative, and world-wise students to our freshman class. Our new students come from 15 states, five countries, and 212 U.S. high schools.

• Combined, our new freshmen completed more than 15, 000 hours of community service.
• About 40 students took college classes simultaneously while in high school.
• 64 new student-athletes include multiple All-American awarded athletes and team captains.
• We are joined by bilingual, trilingual, and quadrilingual students, high school valedictorians, salutatorians, student body presidents vice presidents, secretaries, and treasurers.
• We are joined by a United States Tennis Association ranked player, a competitive mixed martial artist, a competitive equestrian, a state ranked Tae Kwon Do competitor, a Boston Marathon qualifier, and a student who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.

We also welcome musicians, poets, debaters, and tutors. One of our students turned down a job with “Disney on Ice” to join our BFA in Dance program. Another is a competitive baker.

Benjamin Ludeman

Major: Business • Hometown: Portland, Oregon

He was a star lacrosse player and two-time team captain at Westview High School in Portland, Oregon, who traveled all over the country to play, yet Ben Ludeman said his “defining moment” in high school was when his anthropology teacher accepted his offer to do an independent study with her about child soldiers in Africa. The curriculum was laid out and Ben wrote two essays that spelled out the problem and potential solutions.

In the Dominican School of Business and Leadership, Ben will be challenged by real-world problems in undergraduate programs such as accounting, finance, international business, management and marketing. His concentration is in marketing, but he also is intrigued by sports management.