Ward Prize Celebrates Fine-Tuned First-Year Writers

Author: Yvonne Chen

The annual Paul Ward '25 Prize in Writing was presented to Allison Williams '05 and Joshua Axelrod '05 on Oct.4. For nearly 25 years the prize has been awarded annually to a first-year student who exhibits excellence in writing. This was the first year since 1990 that the prize was awarded to two students.
This year, 38 students were nominated, a sizeable increase from last year's 15 nominees. Suzanne Mozes '05 was the runner-up, while the five honorable mentions recognized the writing of Alexandra Castilo-Kesper '05, Alexis Kearney '05, Mallika Rao '05, Liam Aiello '05 and Emily Berlanstein '05.
The winners of the Ward Prize were decided by an instructor's nomination based on an essay written in the course. This was conducted by an interdisciplinary panel of faculty judges, including David Price of the English department and Matt Dickerson of the computer science department.
Director of Writing Kathleen Skubikowski provided welcoming remarks in which she likened choosing between such different essays as something like "comparing apples and oranges." Karl Lindholm, dean of advising, was the guest speaker at the awards reception.
The two winners, the runner-up and each of the five honorable mention recipients were introduced by the professors who had nominated them.
The content of essays covered a range of disciplines and methods. Allison Williams wrote a research paper that focused on the role of the church in African American Life. The paper was for a religion class that studied American religious life.
Joshua Axelrod '05 wrote a memoir titled "Calling Eastern Oregon Home" for the English class on nature writing that he took with Professor John Elder last spring.
Suzanne Mozes wrote a paper for her first year seminar in which she analyzed the transformation of the character Anne Elliot in Jane Austen's novel "Persuasion."
Among the honorable mentions were Alexandra Castilo-Kesper's hypertext fairytale titled "Sophie Cow Totally Wigs Out," Alexis Kearney's survey paper titled "NESCAC Athletes: A True Representation of the Student Body?" and Mallika Rao's art history response paper about the painting "The Venus of Rabino."
Winners of the first prize and the runner-up prize gave oral presentations of their work. Williams read an excerpt from the very end of her paper in which she described the African American church as a place of education, social equality, and empowerment during the Civil Rights Movement. The paper included a well-rounded survey of the evolving role of the church in the African American Community, without focusing on specific denominations. It was elegant and purposeful and Williams further developed her paper by using several relevant quotes from the Baptist Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

Williams chose her topic because she felt that the African American church was often overlooked in classes and in people's general knowledge about American religious movements. "I thought it would be interesting to explore how a minority and marginalized religious movement like that in the African American church has influenced mainstream religion," Williams commented. She described her paper as focusing on the use of Christianity within the American institution of slavery and the gradual acceptance of Christianity by slaves and African Americans. In her paper, Williams detailed the method by which Christianity was used to support the development of Civil Rights. She noted, "Religion has been tied to the quest for freedom from slavery and for Civil Rights. Religion and Freedom are parallel subjects," Williams added that she has a special interest in historical writing and plans to be a history major. She hopes to one day to become a professor of history.

Axelrod, on the other hand, is more interested in creative writing. He is an English Major, with a focus in creative writing, and wrote an extensive personal narrative in which he deals with his nostalgia for home.

In the absence of high peaks, rushing mountains and drainages, Axelrod found himself feeling homesick during his first year in Vermont. What was supposed to be a five-page narrative became a project of gargantuan proportions. In total, the memoir spans 58 pages structured into 10 chapters and revised over the course of several months.

When asked why he wrote such an extensive personal narrative, Axelrod responded
"It wasn't my original plan at all... I wanted to write about the environmental damage of the dams on 250 miles of the Columbia River between Boardman, Oregon and my home in Portland." But after he first started writing, Axelrod realized that his memoir was more about "different areas in Eastern Oregon ... the mountain ranges and the rivers there and the experiences I had growing up in that landscape and learning about the landscape."

Looking back on his piece today, Axelrod still feels a bit shocked that he won. The day before he left Middlebury to return home last May, his professor, John Elder, told him that he was going to submit the piece but Elder did not tell him that it was for the Ward Prize. Axelrod found out that he was one of the two winners only a week before the awards reception. "I was really nervous but really excited because I had given up on the hope of having [the piece] amount to anything … it was one of my first major efforts," Axelrod remarked after Friday's reception.

Now, a semester later, Axelrod has a different view of his memoir. "Now I go back to the piece and I want to change it. Stylistically I feel like I was so much younger when I wrote it. Parts of it are really good and others I would change dramatically. I would probably make it move a little quicker and change a lot."

In response to winning, Williams said that "winning was a big surprise! ... I didn't even know about the Ward Prize before now." She also added "one of the cool things about this award is that it recognizes so many people from so many different departments who wrote about such a wide variety of topics." Axelrod echoed her enthusiasm, saying, "it was so exciting to have your professor who is a famous writer up there introducing your work. I'm so grateful to Professor Elder."