Excellence, Revealed

New award celebrates the class of 2013's creativity

by MaryAlice Bitts

February 23, 2010

First-Year Seminar Excellence in Writing Award recipients were honored at a January reception. From left: Christopher Theodorou, Alexandra North, Matthew Manarski, Christina Socci and Leah McNamara.

The task of writing one’s first college paper can be daunting. The bar, after all, has been raised. And that paper deemed brilliant in high school may not sparkle so brightly under the higher-education sun.

But, with a little diligence and guidance, members of the class of 2013 have risen to the challenge. During their first semester at Dickinson, students uncovered social injustices and examined theories and works of art with fresh perspectives. They learned to move gracefully among multiple sources, synthesize arguments and leap reference-book stacks in a single bound. And they did it with passion and style.

That warrants a little celebration—thus the founding of the First-Year Seminar Excellence in Writing Award.

Students submitted 87 papers to the first contest—a response that generated a lot of reading material for the judges, Judy Gill, director of the Writing Center, and Noreen Lape, writing program director. But, said Lape, it was worth the work. “We were very pleased and surprised by the high level of enthusiasm. We were also impressed by the quality of writing produced by the winners,” she said.

Those winners—Leah McNamara, Matthew Manarski, Alexandra North, Christina Socci and Christopher Theodorou—were recently recognized at a reception, where they received a commemorative plaque and a $100 award. But for Manarski, who earned praise for the deftness and depth of his essay addressing social-justice issues in public education, the competition was its own reward.

“Writing often comes across as a bland and laborious activity, but it can be as creative as drawing a picture, and the contest was great motivation to get those creative juices flowing,” he said.

That motivation is exactly the point. According to Robert Winston, professor of English and assistant provost of first-year programs, as the contest affirms the centrality of writing in both the first-year seminar program and the college curriculum as a whole, it also generates enthusiasm by celebrating student successes. And, adds Lape, it helps students communicate what they’ve learned with their peers.

“A goal of first-year seminars is to introduce students into the community of inquiry that informs academe, a goal the writing program supports,” she said. “The First-Year Seminar Excellence in Writing Award is a way to mark students’ confident entry into the academic community.”

That sense of community is important for McNamara, who is happy to share what she learned while researching her paper about the atrocities committed by King Leopold II in the Congo. She said that her experience of writing and sharing her paper, which earned kudos for its nuance and complexity, have helped her grasp the true power of the written word.

“Even if only one other person can learn about the need for people to advocate for Africa, then the writing was worthwhile,” she said.

Lape hopes that first-year students and their professors will continue to collaborate on revising papers such as these for use beyond the classroom, and she's eager to read more of what the class of 2013 has to say. “The winning students showed a high level of critical thinking and, in some cases, an ability to synthesize complex academic arguments,” she said. “I can't wait to see what they are writing three years from now.”

View the winning entries.