KU News Release

New award honors outstanding writing with $1,000 prize

LAWRENCE — University of Kansas students know outstanding writing can earn them good grades and career opportunities. Now, top-notch prose can put money in their pockets.

The Chancellor’s Writing Prize will award $1,000 each to one undergraduate and one graduate student who have collaborated with a faculty member and a KU Writing Center consultant to improve his or her writing abilities and produce outstanding original compositions. The annual award was established in 2007 by Chancellor Robert E. Hemenway to encourage excellence in writing, acknowledge the importance of consultation from faculty and the KU Writing Center and to promote writing across KU’s curriculum.

To enter, students must be enrolled as an undergraduate or graduate student at KU during the spring semester of an academic year. Only writing created to meet specific course requirements in a KU department or program during summer or fall 2007 or spring 2008 is eligible. Theses and dissertations do not qualify.

The deadline for submissions in this year’s contest is 5 p.m. Monday, June 2. Prizes will be awarded annually on Oct. 10 in commemoration of the date the KU Writing Center was established. This year, the inaugural award will coincide with the center’s 10th anniversary.

Entries should be submitted as a two-part portfolio. The first part should contain one piece of writing in at least three drafts: one reflecting collaboration with the instructor and one showing collaboration with the KU Writing Center. The final draft should be no less than 2,000 words. The second part of the portfolio must include two reflective essays of no more than 500 words each — one by the student, the other by the instructor — discussing the contribution of the center to the writing. Portfolios should be submitted electronically as a Microsoft Word attachment to writing@ku.edu.

The winners will be determined by a prize board made up of representatives from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, two KU schools, the Edwards Campus, the KU Medical Center and Student Success. For more information on the prize, visit the center's Web site or contact Terese Thonus, director of the KU Writing Center.

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