On behalf of the entire faculty, we are pleased to announce this year’s winners of our departmental graduate awards:

The Department of Philosophy award for teaching excellence goes to Morgan Elbot.

The Department of Philosophy award for outstanding service goes to Reese Faust.

We are lucky to have many skilled teachers and many great citizens among our graduate ranks (some of whom have been recognized already in other ways). But these two students have made a special mark during the past year. Please join us in congratulating them for their success and leadership!

It’s our privilege to announce the winners of this year’s inaugural Seshat Essay Competition Winners. The Seshat Prize is made possible by generosity of an anonymous donor. Seshat was the ancient Egyptian goddess of wisdom and writing, and the prize recognizes the convergence of wisdom and writing in an essay. A prize of $1,250 will be awarded to the best graduate student essay. Two prizes, one of $700 and one of $400, will be awarded to the first and second best undergraduate student essays.

Here are the results for the undergraduate prizes:

1^st place:  Balqiss Alattiyat for her paper, “The Case of Cultural Gaslighting and Genocide in Palestine”

2^nd place: Kayla Cochran for her paper, “America’s Moral Revolution: Overcoming Oppression”

The winner of the gradate prize is:

Matt Fee, for his paper “Curating the Self: An Aesthetic Theory of Personal Identity”

Thanks to the award selection committees, and very warm congratulations to these emerging scholars!

It is our distinct pleasure and honor to announce that this year the Philosophy Department is bringing home both of the university top honors for graduate students.

Dr. Mike Ardoline has won the coveted Morton Dissertation Award, out of a pool of approximately 100 doctorate degrees! Wow. Bravo!

And…

Corey Reed has won the prestigious Meritorious Teaching Award. He was selected from more than 250 graduate students who teach at the university. Wow again! Bravo!

As we draw towards the end of the ultimate year of grit and grind, this is a wonderful and refreshing bit of sunshine. Hearty congratulations to Corey and Dr. Ardoline. This reflects both the hard work and the talent that you bring to your research and your classrooms. You bring honor to us all.