Undergraduate Writing Contest

The English Department honors excellent undergraduate writing created in its composition classes by awarding cash prizes to winners of the annual Composition Program Writing Contest. Each year’s panel of judges looks for thoughtfully crafted essays that explore a subject’s complexity. To showcase both the range and the quality of work valued by the Composition Program, prize-winning essays from recent years are published here with permission of the student authors (who retain copyright to their work). Each essay is accompanied by commentary from the judges, highlighting what they considered awardworthy. It should be noted that most Contest winners were first-year students at the time of writing and that papers were not revised or edited for web-publication. The essays are not being offered as models of perfected student writing nor as templates for a successful paper; they represent outstanding achievement by students who submitted their work to the Writing Contest for each academic year.