Honors Book Awards

To encourage and recognize excellence in written work in the Honors seminars, the program gives cash awards to the best essays written annually in four different categories. The Honors Council also chooses from among those winning papers a "Best Honors Program Essay of the Year," whose writer receives an additional cash award. Awards are announced at the annual spring Honors banquet and winners have their names engraved on a plaque that hangs in Nunemaker Place, home of the Honors program. The awards for the 2011-2012 academic year were:

Category 1 (Humanities)

• Jessica Bowen, "All You Need is (the Right Kind of Love" 

Category 2 (Sciences)

• *Melanie Long, "Tool or Science?: The Methodological Paradox of Neoclassical Economics"

Category 3 (Social Sciences)

• David Luhr, "The Dangers of Emulation and Conspicuous Consumption"

Category 4 (Special Topics & Cross-Listed Classes)

• Sam Webster, "Negotiating the Space between Urban and Rural: Simmel's Blase Attitude Visits the Suburbs"  

The Honors Council, in conjunction with the Honors director, will also select a paper to submit for the NCHC's annual Portz Scholar competition, which is the national competition for best undergraduate writing in Honors programs. Three winners of Portz awards receive $250 each and are recognized at the NCHC's national convention.  Typically, that paper will be selected from an upper-level Honors Book Award paper or an essay generated from an Honors Independent Summer research Grant.

*Best essay of the year award.