Diversity & Student Services
Within the PWR, diversity is a core value. Diversity and Civic Engagement/Service are well taught, learned, maintained, and continually improved by faculty, administrators, students and the program as a whole. The Program’s Diversity and Student Services Committee plans events to teach and celebrate diversity, such as speakers, workshops and films. We also encourage all faculty to develop courses with diversity foci and incorporate diversity within all of our course offerings. The PWR offers lower-division courses with diverse reading themes from language and gender to multi-cultural rhetorics, and poverty. Additionally, PWR upper-division course topics encompass a wide range of diversity topics: queer rhetorics, women writers, rhetoric of faith, spirituality, immigration, cross-cultural writing and film, feminism and motherhood, race, class, gender and more. As part of the PWR writing awards, we award 3 prizes for the best writing about diversity/inclusion topics in any genre at any PWR course level. Past year prize winners are below.
Note: Awards submission periods run from February of the previous year to March of the awarding year.
Diversity Award
Traditional or multi-modal essays written for any PWR class in any genre that pertains to diversity. Submissions may address diversity in the broadest sense, including such topics as social class, gender, sexuality, age, race, ability, mental health, ethnicity, or cultural difference.
2024 Diversity Award Winner(s)
1st Place: Nathaniel Stein for "Public Enemy".
2nd Place: Anonymous - "Equality in our Schools".
3rd Place: Macy Baker - "The One About Gender Stereotyping and Lack of Diversity: Gender and Diversity Portrayals in Sitcoms in the 1990s and 2000s".
2023 Diversity Award Winner(s)
1st Place: Anonymous for "Becoming a 'Straightforward Case': Transgender Assimilation and the False Self".
2nd Place: Anonymous for "Women, Life, Freedom: Women of Iran's Protests for a Life of Freedom".
3rd Place: Emily Miller for "Malcom the Movement".
2022 Diversity Award Winner(s)
1st Place: Neil Ray for “A New Look at the Nacirema”. Instructor: Andrea Feldman
2nd Place Tie: Austen Swinton for "New Horizons". Instructor: Andrea Feldman
2nd Place Tie: Brendan Thompson for "What the Poor Man Says is Not Listened to". Instructor: Andrea Feldman
2021 Diversity Award Winner(s)
The DSS committee’s judges have chosen the following students for 2020 Diversity Awards.
Cydney Jardine for "Cultural Competency Programs: Decreasing Health Disparities Resulting in Implicit Bias”. Instructor: Don Wilkerson
2020 Diversity Award Winner(s)
The DSS committee’s judges have chosen the following students for 2019 Diversity Awards.
1st Place: Valeria Rodriguez for “Choosing Me”. Instructor: Petgar Schaberg
2nd Place: Holly Borland for “Ebola Vaccine Trials: The Unethicality of Current Approaches”. Instructor: Donald Wilkerson
3rd Place: Luis Ramirez for “The Wall Between Latinos and Education”. instructor: Rebecca Dickson
2019 Diversity Award Winner(s)
The DSS committee’s judges have chosen the following students for 2018 Diversity Awards.
1st Place: Nicole Mattson for Pathologizing Culture Instructor: Andrea Feldman
2nd Place: Nicole Sharpe for Medical Schools Lack Cultural Competency Instructor: Don Wilkerson
3rd Place: Jackson Deakins for Smoke Break Instructor: Eric Burger
2018 Diversity Award Winner(s)
The DSS committee’s judges have chosen the following students for 2017 Diversity Awards.
1st Place: Nathaniel Curtis for Denial of Equal Access: Why the FDA Should Approve Cochlear Implants for Unilateral Hearing Loss Instructor: Don Wilkerson
2nd Place: Emma Levy for Best Friends Found in Unlikely Places Instructor: Mike Zizzi
3rd Place: Kaycee Maas for The Not-So-Invisible Glass Ceiling Instructor: Andrea Feldman
2017 Diversity Award Winner(s)
The DSS committee’s judges have chosen the following students for 2016 Diversity Awards.
1st Place: Caia Dolan for Going Home Instructor: Andrea Feldman
2nd Place: Maanasa Srinivasan for The Lunchbox Instructor: Alex Fobes
3rd Place: Adan Orozco for “Rooted” Instructor: Tracy Ferrell
Judges: Andrea Stith, Sarah McQuate, and Catherine Lasswell
New Multilingual Writing Award
We welcome submissions that address diversity in its broadest sense, including such topics as: social class, gender, sexuality, age, race, ability, ethnicity or cultural differences. The award is offered for outstanding traditional or multimodal essays in any genre on topics pertaining to diversity. The multilingual prize is awarded to students writing on a diversity-related topic using or incorporating multiple varieties of English, including students writing English as a Second Language. ESL students are especially encouraged to submit.
2024 Multilingual Award Winner(s)
1st Place: Mohamad Eiman Mohamad Rezwan for "Assessing the Sustainability of Folktales in Malaysia in the 21st Century".
2023 Multilingual Award Winner(s)
1st Place: Xyon Zhang for "Graduation: International Parenthood and Education".
2022 Multilingual Award Winner(s)
Yun-Ping Yang for "Perception of an Accent When Speaking Another Language". Instructor: Andrea Feldman
2021 Multilingual Award Winner(s)
Guillermo Reyes Martinez for “La Verdad Después De María”. Instructor: Andrea Feldman
Urja Shrestha for “Newari Language Extinction”. Instructor: Andrea Feldman
2020 Multilingual Award Winner(s)
Ziwei Cheng for “Transgenders Today”. Instructor: Andrea Feldman