Annual Faculty Award
The AGLSP Annual Faculty Award is offered each year by the Association to honor an outstanding faculty member who teaches within graduate liberal studies (GLS). The award was established by the Association’s Board of Directors in 1991 to recognize outstanding faculty who exemplify the qualities of interdisciplinary, liberal teaching and who have participated significantly in teaching or advising students and/or have actively participated in other faculty service in a graduate liberal studies program.
The award is a prestigious recognition of an individual associated with a member program who has made a considerable contribution to interdisciplinary liberal studies teaching and advising. The recipient will receive a plaque and $500 cash award at the Association’s Annual Conference and will make a brief presentation upon receiving the award. Recipient’s conference registration and lodging are provided by the Association; the recipient’s home program is responsible for transportation and additional expenses. The recipient’s remarks will be posted on the AGLSP website and published in Confluence.
The 2023 recipient of the Annual Faculty Award is Professor Newell Boyd of Rice University.
Confluence Student Writing Awards
Each year the AGLSP Board, in cooperation with the Editorial Board of Confluence, highlights the quality of student work produced in member programs by awarding the Frederick Luis Aldama Excellence in Creative Writing award and the Excellence in Interdisciplinary Writing award. The first award celebrates creative writing as a form of inquiry, art, and expression, and is given to an exemplary single piece in any of the genres of creative writing, such as short story, personal essay, creative nonfiction, or poetry. New for 2023 - The Frederick Luis Aldama Excellence in Creative Writing award will be proudly sponsored by Dr. Frederick Luis Aldama, aka Professor LatinX, award winning author and professor of English at the University of Texas Austin. The second award celebrates interdisciplinary inquiry as the central intellectual practice of Graduate Liberal Studies and critical writing as a foundational tool of graduate study, and is given to a carefully-researched and well-crafted critical essay that makes exemplary use of interdisciplinary tools in order to engage a general educated audience.
Each award may be given to any current student or recent graduate (up to one-year post-graduation) of an AGLSP institutional member program in good standing.
Directors of any AGLSP institutional member program may nominate up to two entries per award each year, based on a screening procedure agreed upon by the program’s regular faculty. Only one piece by each author may be nominated. Nominations must be submitted by the director to the editor of Confluence by the due date (usually in late April). Submissions may include any work written as part of the author's graduate work during the previous calendar year. Entries may be no longer than 4000 words, including bibliographic materials prepared as endnotes in Chicago style. Each entry should also include full contact information for the author, a bio note including likely date of graduation, and, in the case of critical essays, a lively 150-word abstract that makes clear the interdisciplinary nature of the piece.
The author of each winning submission will receive a prize of $500 and will be invited to attend the Annual Conference to receive the award in person; the Association will waive the conference registration fee if the awardee chooses to attend the conference. All travel expenses including airfare and accommodations are not covered by the association. It is with hope and expectation that the winner's home program will help defray the writer’s travel expenses if the awardee would like to personally accept their award at the conference. Additionally, both winning submissions will be published in the fall issue of Confluence to coincide with the Annual Conference. Although only one award is given per category each year, runner-up submissions may also be considered for publication in Confluence. Previous award-winning pieces can be found on the Confluence website.
Confluence Student Writing Awards Online Nomination Form
2023 Confluence Student Writing Awards winners:
The winner of the Frederick Luis Aldama Excellence in Creative Writing Award is Hana Elysia from San Diego State University for her paper, “The Fifth Incident.”
The winner of the Excellence in Interdisciplinary Writing Award is Kelly Harrison from Stanford University for her paper, "Colonial Astronomers and the Transit of Venus: An Exemplar of American Enlightened Thinking.”
The award-winning submissions will be published in the Fall 2022 issue of Confluence. Congratulations to both writers for their excellent work!
Outstanding Contribution Award
The Outstanding Contribution Award, established by the Board in 2005, recognizes an outstanding faculty member, program director, or administrator from an institutional member of the AGLSP who has established an extraordinary record of long-term leadership, advocacy, and commitment to Graduate Liberal Studies. The award celebrates a lifetime record of achievement that has significantly advanced the mission of interdisciplinary graduate education regionally, nationally, or internationally. This honor is awarded by the Board. Past recipients are:
2007 – Dr. R. Barry Levis, Rollins College
2006 – Dr. Phyllis O’Callaghan, Georgetown University
2005 – Dr. Charles R. Strain, DePaul University