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Awards for Excellent Undergraduate and Graduate Students

Awards for Excellent Undergraduate and Graduate Students

The awards and honors listed below will be announced at the dean's convocation, and surely also at this year's senior luncheon. The UGKOM also decided and are in the process of finalizing a new award for next year, the CHARLES WADE MILLS AWARD for the best short paper (up to 5 pages without bibliography) written by a student in a philosophy class of the year. For more about the awards and the significance of their namesakes, check out the website at http://www.philosophy.northwestern.edu/undergraduate/honors-awards/philosophy-awards.html.

Here are the UG-Awards IN NU PHILOSOPHY OF THE YEAR 2023:

The STEPHEN WHITE PRIZE for the best paper written by a student in their first or second year goes to Calvin Xu (2nd Year) for their paper "Cogito, the Self, and Freedom: On Self-Knowledge and the Possibility of Freedom in Kant’s System" (instructor Axel Mueller in PHIL 313-1 'Kant's Critique of Pure Reason 1-- The Analytic')

The BRENTANO prize for the best paper written by a student in their third or fourth year goes to Mary Clayton (3rd Year) for their paper "On God’s infinity and its ineffable consequences" (instructor Peter van Elswyk in PHIL 353 ‘Philosophy of Language – The Limits of Language')

The DAVID HULL PRIZE for the best senior thesis of the academic year goes to Sofía Stutz for their thesis "Kant and Murdoch on Turning Outward" (supervisor Kyla Ebels Duggan)

The HONKOM's recommendation for HONORS WITH DISTINCTION IN PHILOSOPHY, goes out to: Tomer Cherki for their excellent work in the honors program, excellent accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their highly accomplished philosophical work in the interdisciplinary thesis "Consummation of Judaism: A Dynamic Approach to Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and the Jewish Question" (PHIL supervisor Mark Alznauer); and Sofía Stutz, for their excellent work in the honors program, excellent accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their very highly accomplished work in the thesis "Kant and Murdoch on Turning Outward" (supervisor Kyla Ebels Duggan)

The HONKOM's recommendation for HONORS IN PHILOSOPHY goes out to: Mika Gao for their excellent work in the honors program, excellent accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their accomplished work in the thesis "Collective Imagination, Genealogy approach, and Institutional regulations" (supervisor Sandy Goldberg); and John Perales, Jr for their excellent work in the honors program, very good accomplishments as a philosophy major, and their accomplished work in the interdisciplinary thesis "Propaganda Identification and Characterization within the Public vis-à-vis Scholarly Accounts" (PHIL supervisor Megan Hyska).

This year's STEPHEN TOULMIN PRIZE honoring superior overall achievement throughout all courses in their UG-career as major and amount of engagement in philosophy-courses (measured by the best GPA in philosophy x credits for a graduating philosophy major) is awarded to Tomer Cherki.

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 atmospheric and social changes in our department. This year's award goes to Selina Liu. The department recognizes Selina Liu’s exemplary, exceptionally effective leadership and continuous energetic engagement as recruiter and president for WiPhi and mediator of cooperations between the philosophy department’s UG organizations (WiPhi, NUPS, etc.); Ruth Barcan Marcus Clinic for formal logic peer-tutor; and specifically the fact that much of their engagement in maintaining the reach of PHIL UG organizations was performed during the difficult times of the pandemic and the consequent student-diaspora from afar. Their activities and engagement for its UG-initiatives were crucial for maintaining this essential part of the departmental UG-experience, and without them, many of the things we took a long time to build wouldn’t have held up as they did.

The RUTH BARCAN MARCUS AWARD for tutoring in formal logic goes to Selina Liu & Yasmeen Nahas.

As this year's Senior Marshal for the Philosophy department at the Graduation ceremonies we designated Tomer Cherki for his continued engagement in the community and innovative and energetic initiatives around the PHIL UG-community.

The departmental Thomas A. McCarthy Award for Excellence in Teaching by a philosophy graduate teaching assistant went to Dominique Codjia.

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