FYE Prize

Candace Carlucci Backus '66 FYE Prize in Honor of Student Academic Achievement in the First-Year Experience

The First-Year Experience Prize, supported with the generosity of Candace Carlucci Backus ’66, will be awarded annually to up to three projects by first-year students in recognition of exceptional scholarly or artistic achievement in the fall’s Scribner Seminars.

During the spring semester, the First-Year Experience Office will solicit nominations from the previous fall’s Scribner Seminar instructors. Nominations may be either for individual or collaborative projects, and may include any kind of exemplary work – written, visual, or performative.


Congratulations to the Class of 2025 FYE Prize Winners:

Georgie Svrcek (’25), David Salinas (’25), and Heba Salman (‘25) are co-recipients of the 2021-22 Candace Carlucci Backus Prize for exceptional scholarly or artistic work by a first-year student. 

 

Georgie Svrcek was in Professor Amy Oh’s “Ancient Medicine” seminar which required students to write an ancient “Doctor’s Diary” in which they drew on course readings to imagine and describe an encounter with an ailing patient.  She describes interactions with and diagnoses of four different patients in ways that are entertaining and illuminating.  Georgie’s diary is written in rhyming couplets with footnotes—impressive in their cogence and connection to scholarship—to explain diagnoses and quips.  It is extraordinary in its creativity, word play, and connection to the academic material in the seminar.  Congratulations to Georgie!

 

David Salinas and Heba Salman were in Professor Mike Dunn’s “American Immigrant Experience” seminar which required students to pair up and co-produce a 30- to 60-minute podcast by the same name.  David and Heba produced a compelling podcast that blends their own immigrant experiences with interviews of immigrant mothers of widely different origins.  Their final product conforms closely to the assignment guidelines but includes four interviews rather than just one.  Their editing of the interview material and scoring weave a compelling narrative of recent immigrant experiences.  Congratulations to David and Heba!