The Advisory Board for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Florida State University is proud to announce its Second Annual Undergraduate Essay Contest in Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This contest is meant to highlight the insights and analysis possible using the sources and methodologies associated with Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies across the disciplines. The winner of the contest will receive a $250 prize, with a $100 prize going to the second place essay. The awards will be presented at a ceremony held in the Spring 2025 semester.
How the Contest works: The contest will reward the best essay written for a classroom assignment by an undergraduate at Florida State University for the 2024 calendar year. Every professor (of any rank, from adjuncts and graduate student instructors, to full professors) can nominate one essay per semester.
To nominate an essay, professors must join the WGSS Canvas group, and agree to help out with the judging of essays, if requested. In this way, the first round of judging happens with the individual professor, the person best suited to judge the quality of work as it relates to their discipline. The requirement to help with the final round of judging, if requested, ensures that there will be representatives from all disciplines available when a campus-wide winner is selected.
Students who write an essay in the Spring 2024 semester that they would like nominated for the award should approach the professor of the class in which it was written, asking to be considered for nomination. Professors, considering all the requests, can nominate one of those essays by submitting it in the “2024 WGSS Undergraduate Essay Contest” module on the WGSS Canvas site (click on the “Modules” link on the left-hand side of the WGSS Canvas site) between May 1 and Oct. 1, 2024. At that point, nominations for essays written in the Spring 2024 semester will close.
Students who write an essay in the Fall 2024 semester that they would like nominated for the award should follow the same procedures as above, with professors submitting their nomination for the semester to the “2024 WGSS Undergraduate Essay Contest” module on between January 1 and February 15, 2025. At that point, nominations for essays written in the Fall 2024 semester will close.
Professors can also ask students from their classes if they would like to have a paper nominated. Professors are encouraged to let their students know about the contest. Papers should be between five and twenty pages in length, and only one entry per student. If a student submits a paper for both the Spring and Fall semesters, only the Fall paper will be considered. All papers submitted are considered “semi-finalists” since the first round of judging has happened with the nominating professor, from among all the papers they read for that semester.
Thank you for both your participation and your patience with us as we work out the mechanisms that create a system that is both fair to all students across the many disciplines taught on campus, and to the graduate student, faculty, and staff volunteers who are giving their time and energy to make this happen. To be added to the WGSS Canvas group, or to ask questions about this contest, please contact Prof. Charles Upchurch, Chair of the Advisory Board of the Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Florida State University. cupchurch@fsu.edu
FSU WGSS Website: https://ws.artsandsciences.fsu.edu/