The Winston Family University Honors Best Student Paper Awards

The Best Honors Student Paper Awards were established in honor of the founding Director of the Maryland University Honors Program, Dr. John Portz. These three awards recognize the best essay, research paper and thesis written by an Honors student.

We are grateful to Roger ’76 and Karen ’75 Winston and their daughter Emily Winston ’06, a University Honors alumna, whose generous gift provides the merit award given to the highest achieving students in the past year’s Honors courses. We deeply appreciate the Winston family’s commitment to University Honors and the University of Maryland and their investment in academic excellence. 


Submissions must have been completed or presented during the spring 2012 or fall 2012 semester.
For Best Consideration, Submit Entries By: Monday, March 4, 8:00 a.m.

There are three principal categories for the awards:

· Best University Honors Essay
An essay written for an HONR seminar; it may or may not use secondary sources; approximate length is 5-10 pages. The essay should articulate the student’s own thinking on a course topic and should be written in the student’s voice.

· Best University Honors Research Paper
A paper written for an HONR seminar, H-version, or H-option course, a minimum length of 10 pages, excluding bibliography pages.

· Best Honors Thesis
A departmental honors in-depth research / scholarly endeavor culminating in a thesis.

To submit papers for consideration for any these awards:

·         Students complete the Student Application and then send application and paper via email to: honors@umd.edu with the subject line “UH Best Paper Awards”.

·        Faculty mentors complete the Faculty Statement (a brief statement on the merits and weakness, if any, of the paper) and send to via email attachment to: honors@umd.edu with the subject line “UH Best Paper Awards”Faculty statements are completely confidential and we count on faculty to be candid.

AWARDS:

Students and faculty will be honored at a special University Honors Luncheon on Friday, April 12, at noon.

· Student winners will receive a cash prize applied to their student account, a photograph taken with their faculty mentor, and a certificate acknowledging their award.

· Faculty mentors will receive a photograph taken with their student winner, and a certificate acknowledging their role.

· The names of student winners and faculty mentors will be announced on the Honors College website, and in the Honors Newsletter, and will be added to the Honors Student Paper Award History online. 

ELIGIBILITY:

· The submissions for these awards must have arisen from: an HONR seminar, an H-version or H-Option course. The thesis must be the culminating requirement in a departmental Honors program.

· Submissions must be in an academic format.

· Submissions must be corrected and polished under the guidance of the faculty mentor as if the essay were being prepared for publication.