Albert I. Dickerson, for many years Dean of Freshmen, took great interest in first-year composition. In his memory, a prize has been established which will be awarded annually to that student who writes an outstanding expository essay in a First-Year Seminar/Humanities 2, or in a Writing 5/Humanities 1 class, or in a Writing 2-3 class, as decided by a volunteer committee of Writing faculty from across the first-year courses.
Each instructor should make a preliminary selection of the best essay written in his or her class each term. Nominations are limited to 1 per class. The instructor is permitted to make constructive criticism of the essay and the student is permitted to revise it before submitting it for competition to the Director of the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. The instructor will obtain the agreement of the student before submitting a selected essay.
The competition entries will be judged by the prize committee after the completion of the Spring Term each year.
Nominations for the 2012 -2013 prizes should be sent to Hope Rennie <hope.rennie@dartmouth.edu>.
Dickerson Prize winners for the 2011-2012 academic year are as follows:
"SaigÅ Takamori and the Samurai During the Early Meiji Restoration (1860 - 1877)" by James Alexander Brofos for Professor Julie Kalish's class (download PDF here)
"Minds Molded Like Wax: The Shift from Charismatic to Intellectual Learning in the Twelfth Century" by Grace Elizabeth Sollender for Professor Michael Peixoto's class (download PDF here)
The Benjamin F. Barge Prize for Oratory and the Class of 1866 Prizes for Oratory are awarded through speech contests organized by the Speech Program. Please see the Speech homepage for more information.
