Awards for Excellent Undergraduate and Graduate Students
Awards for Excellent Undergraduate and Graduate Students
The awards and honors listed below were announced at the dean’s convocation, and bestowed on the students by the department at this year’s senior luncheon. There are three equally important categories of awards the department honors students by: Citizenship and Engagement awards, Academic Excellence in the UG program awards, and Academic Excellence in the Honors program awards. In addition, the department also honors the best of its graduate student teaching assistants with a Teaching Excellence award. For more about the awards and the significance of their namesakes, check out the website here.
OSCARS (aka UG-Awards) IN NU PHILOSOPHY OF THE YEAR 2025:
Engagement & Citizenship Awards
The LULA A PETERSON prize for exemplary citizenship for the philosophy major honors students who have gone far beyond the call of duty in their functions and organizing activities to truly create positive and needed atmospheric and social changes in our department. This year’s award goes to Giulia Cigolot.
By it, the department recognizes their exemplary leadership and continuous energetic engagement as recruiter and presidents of the NU-Philosophy Bussey Society, their engagement as mediators of cooperations between the philosophy department’s UG organizations and in the remaining UG-organizations in the department for the benefit of NU-PHIL’s UG-community.
The RUTH BARCAN MARCUS award—acknowledging their engagement in fostering equity among students in the formal sciences by teaching and mentoring students who are traditionally underrepresented and underserved in formal science instruction—for tutoring in formal logic goes to Mary Clayton & Heidi Schmid.
At this year’s Senior Marshal for the Philosophy department at the Graduation ceremonies, we designated (for his continued engagement in the community and innovative and energetic initiatives around the PHIL UG-community) Andrew Chin for this honor.
Academic Awards in the undergraduate program
The CHARLES W MILLS prize for the best short paper (up to 5 pages) of the year written by a student in a philosophy class goes to Lilia Xia for their paper “A Contingent Identity-Based View of Gender” (instructor: Morgan Thompson in PHIL 259, Fall 2024).
The STEPHEN WHITE prize for the best paper written by a student in their first or second year goes to Bennett Tung for their paper “Affirmative Action” (instructor: Morgan Thompson in PHIL 101-8, Winter 2025).
The BRENTANO prize for the best paper written by a student in their third or fourth year goes to Maddie Kerr for their paper ”(Dis)ordering the Mind/Brain: The Continued Need for Social Constructionism in Psychiatry” (instructor: Morgan Thompson in PHIL 327, Fall 2024)
This year’s STEPHEN TOULMIN PRIZE honoring superior overall achievement throughout all courses in their undergraduate career as major and amount of engagement in philosophy courses (measured by the GPA in philosophy, number and type of credits and other accomplishments for a graduating philosophy major) is awarded to Calvin Xu.
Awards and Distinctions in the Honors Program
Upon the HONKOM’s recommendation, the WCAS Committee for Honors and Excellent Students conferred HONORS IN PHILOSOPHY to
- Meli Silvana Canales for their excellent work in the honors program, excellent accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their accomplished work in the thesis ”The Immoral Nature of Capitalistic Unfreedom” (supervisor: Pascal Brixel).
- Asiah Florczak for their excellent work in the honors program, very good accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their accomplished work in the thesis ”Playing with Purpose: The Moral Duties of WNBA Superstars” (supervisor: Corey Barnes).
- Calvin Xu for their excellent work in the honors program, very good accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their accomplished work in the interdisciplinary thesis ”Meaningfulness and Authenticity: The Standards of Work in a Fully Flourishing Life” (supervisor: Mark Alznauer).
Upon the HONKOM’s recommendation, the WCAS Committee for Honors and Excellent Students conferred HONORS WITH DISTINCTION IN PHILOSOPHY to
- Andrew Chin for their excellent work in the honors program, excellent accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their highly accomplished philosophical work in the thesis ”Practical Experience and Transcendental Argument as the Source of Normativity” (supervisor: Kyla Ebels-Duggan).
- Clary Emiko Doyle for their excellent work in the honors program, excellent accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their very highly accomplished work in the thesis “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” (supervisor: Kyla Ebels-Duggan)
- Ann Nguyen Gaither for their excellent work in the honors program, excellent accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their highly accomplished philosophical work in the thesis ”What do we Call This? Hermeneutic Disagreement as a Kind of Moral Language Disagreement” (supervisor: Peter van Elswyk)
- Mollie Guba for their excellent work in the honors program, excellent accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their highly accomplished work in the interdisciplinary thesis ”Evaluating Plea Bargaining in the United States through Kant’s Theory of Punishment” (supervisor: Mark Alznauer).
The DAVID HULL PRIZE for the best senior thesis of the academic year goes to Ann Nguyen Gaither for their thesis “What do we Call This? Hermeneutic Disagreement as a Kind of Moral Language Disagreement” (supervisor: Peter van Elswyk).
Graduate teaching award
Finally, the departmental Thomas A. McCarthy Award for Excellence in Teaching by a philosophy graduate teaching assistant was awarded to Isaac Shur and Madeleine Roffey for recognition by both the department and their students.