Senior Daniel Miller, winner of the contest's Video Division, shows off his prize: a new Kindle e-reader, donated by The Association of Former Students.
We’re pleased to announce the winners of the University Writing Center’s 10th Anniversary Contest, sponsored by the UWC and The Association of Former Students.
Video Division
- Winner: Daniel Miller for “An Introduction to Chaos Theory with the Lorenz Attractor”
- Honorable Mention: Christina Truong for “Behind the Lens: A Look at Media and Broadcast Objectivity”
Writing Division
- Winner: Hannah Sears for “Southern Summer Night”
- First Runner-up: Laura Oatman for “Memoirs of a Semi-Rabid Fangirl”
- Honorable Mentions: Rebecca Curry for “Sustainability in Construction,” Inhwi Cho for “Your Only Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse: Study of Infectious Diseases,” and Elaine Minden for “The Relationship Between Ready-to-Eat (RTE) Cereal Consumption and BMI in Children and Adolescents”
Daniel Miller’s winning video was a project for MATH 442, a course in mathematical modeling taught by Jean Marie Linhart, a lecturer in the math department. Miller, a senior majoring in math and electrical engineering, edited the original video down to meet the contest guidelines. You can view his submission here.
Hannah Sears originally wrote her winning writing entry, a work of short fiction, for English 345, a creative writing class taught by Assistant Professor Angie Cruz. Sears, now a senior, continued to revise the piece before submitting it to the contest. You can read her work Southern Summer Night here.
You can also read Laura Oatman’s personal essay about being part of the Harry Potter fandom, which was selected as the first runner-up in the writing division: Memoirs of a Semi-Rabid Fangirl.
The winners were selected by the faculty members of the W and C Course Advisory Committee. The winning author and winning filmmaker each received a new Kindle e-reader.
Committee Member Barbara Gastel, professor of veterinary integrative bioscience and humanities in medicine, said, “I was impressed by the number of excellent entries and pleased to see such impressive work coming from a wide variety of disciplines.” Another committee member, Victoria Salin, an associate professor of agricultural economics, said she particularly appreciated the way the winning video presented scientific content in an engaging and accessible manner.
The contest was held as part of the UWC’s tenth anniversary celebration and generously sponsored by the Association of Former Students.
“We wanted to do something special to celebrate the Writing Center’s 10th year and what better way than by recognizing Aggies for their exceptional work?” said UWC Executive Director Valerie Balester. “We were especially pleased to see a number of video entries, many of which started out as class projects: it shows that more instructors are preparing students to communicate in a variety of media.”
The writing submissions included short stories, personal essays, research papers, and technical reports from fields such as industrial engineering and construction science. “Reading the papers provided a glimpse of the breadth and quality of undergraduate work being done at Texas A&M,” said Balester. “It was an impressive array.”
The UWC would like to thank all of the students who submitted their projects, as well as the instructors who guided and mentored them. We’re also grateful to the faculty on the W and C course committee for serving as judges, and, in particular, to The Association of Former Students for partnering with us to make the contest possible.