President Ruth Simmons will personally fund an annual prize for an honors thesis addressing questions on women or gender. The $1,000 award will be administered by the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women.
The award, to be known as the Ruth Simmons Prize in Gender and Women's Studies, is open to undergraduates working in all concentrations, not only gender and sexuality studies. Elizabeth Weed, director of the Pembroke Center, emphasized the breadth of the prize's criteria. The award is meant to recognize that questions of gender are central to a broad array of fields, from English to biology, she said.
This spring, professors in all departments can recommend their students' theses to the Pembroke Center as worthy of consideration. A committee of faculty in the field of gender studies will evaluate the submissions. The inaugural celebration and presentation of the prize will likely take place in early May.
From 1995 through the 2006-2007 academic year, the Pembroke Center administered the Helen Terry MacLeod Prize with essentially the same criteria as the new award. The Simmons prize will replace it, and beginning this fall, the center will instead award the Helen Terry MacLeod Research Grant for undergraduate study. All students working on an honors thesis dealing with women or gender are eligible. Applications for the grant are due Sept. 28.
The main difference between the old prize and the new one is the "visibility" inherent in Simmons' name, Weed said.
Laura Supkoff '08, whose honors thesis in psychology will examine gender differences in mother-infant vocalization, said she finds such publicity important. "You know, whether you get something or not, it's important that people should be inspired to do good work," she said.
