By Jessica Wind (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: October 24, 2012
For 22 years the UFV Writing Centre has been acknowledging exceptional student writing, but this is the first year that the ceremony has been held in the foyer right outside the centre.
Desks and couches were replaced with audience seating outside the Writing Centre in G building on October 18 for the annual writing competition awards ceremony.
Shurli Makmillen, competition judge and Writing Centre employee, said the switch of venue worked well for their purposes.
“I like it. It catches attention. People can see the Writing Centre is a happening place,” she explained, as winners and their families trickled in to find seats.
The location fit roughly 40 chairs, and only a few remained unclaimed by the time ceremony coordinator Gloria Borrows took the podium. She thanked the winners, their families and their professors for attending before turning the floor over to UFV’s vice-president students Jody Gordon, who began by acknowledging the diversity in submissions for the competition.
“Submissions come from math, philosophy, history, theatre, geography, the list keeps growing,” she said with a laugh. “Social work, computer science, nursing, anthropology . . . UFV wishes to celebrate student success in communication in both their courses and beyond.”
This year’s winners came from across departments and ranged from pre-university composition to graduate studies.
The lucky students were given the opportunity to comment on the process and goal of their pieces before being presented with their awards. If a student was unable to attend, the professors spoke on their behalf. This was the case for Kim Milnes who spoke for a group of successful Business 100 students.
“I see a lot of [these assignments] and I would give this report to a business professional,” Milnes said of the winning submission, which explored an investment analysis of Groupon.
Laurie Schultz, who won an award for her Master’s thesis in social work, talked about how the paper was almost never written.
“I told my family when I was in middle school that I would never get my Master’s, for fear of writing a thesis,” she explained. “It is nice knowing that the thing that would have held me back from my post-grad is being honoured in this way.” This was the first year that an award was given to a graduate thesis.
Cornelia Poortvliet-ter Haar spoke emotionally about her journey to winning the award for her paper, which discussed bridging the gap between science and art.
“I spent much time in learning assistance classes trying to tell my brain that the English language reads left to right,” she said, standing at the podium, and addressing her professor, Nadeane Trowse. “I discovered the beauty and versatility in the language in [Trowse’s] class. Thank you for [English 209]. I really got a lot out of it.”
Haar, like all of the speakers, spoke of the passion that went into the essays, and was seen in the final result.
History department head and long-time judge Alisa Webb described what she hopes to see in the submissions.
“I look for students investing themselves into the work. They’re already great pieces, but I look for that something extra.”
Webb has judged the competition on and off for the last 10 years and has watched as writing trends change.
“It is interesting to see the differences across the disciplines. A theatre paper is written much differently than a criminology paper or a history paper,” she explained.
Submissions to the annual writing competition are accepted throughout the year; anything written for a course assignment in the academic year is eligible for submission. The categories are decided once all entries have been collected, based on the different fields of study represented.
Students are encouraged by professors to submit work that they are proud of. Previous years’ winning entries are kept in the Writing Centre in G building between the Tim Hortons and the library, and staff encourage students to come by and take a look at the exceptional work coming out of UFV.
