In an effort to promote writing across the curriculum and to honor outstanding Fort Lewis College writers, the Campus Writing Board created and hosts the Campus Writing Awards each year. The information below details the various awards, submission information, and the criteria for judges.

The purpose of these awards is to recognize excellence in academic writing. “A” level papers written in Winter 2008, Summer 2008, and Fall 2008 trimesters are eligible for this year’s Campus Writing Competition. Papers should be student-authored only. The winning student papers from the 2007 Campus Writing Awards and 2006 Campus Writing Awards are available online.

The papers will be judged by a panel of three individuals, including members of the Campus Writing Board and other Fort Lewis College faculty members. Instructors who submit papers for competition in a category will be ineligible to judge in that category. If you are interested in serving as a judge, please email Brad Benz.

The winners will each receive a $50 cash prize and recognition at Honors Convocation. The authors of papers receiving an "honorable mention" will also be recognized. The faculty sponsors of the winning and "honorable mention" papers will be invited to make the presentations.

Submitting a paper is easy. Hard copy and/or graded papers are fine, but electronic submissions are preferred. For the Composition Writing award, any Comp 126/Comp 150 faculty member may submit a paper. For the College Academic Writing and Professional and Technical Writing awards, any faculty member may submit a paper. Faculty should include a brief note indicating 1) the course the paper was written for, 2) the assignment the paper was written for, and 3) the term when it was written. Send hard copies to Brad Benz, Writing Program, 243 Noble Hall, or email a copy of the paper as a Word document to benz_b@fortlewis.edu. Faculty nominating for all categories, please note: only two papers for each assignment given may be nominated.

All papers should follow standard academic documentation format (e.g., MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.).

The papers will be judged against the College Academic Writing Award's criteria for "communication as intellectual contribution" in an academic context for a scholarly audience. Each paper should:

• make a significant knowledge claim.
• situate the claim in the relevant literature and discuss how its ideas support, modify, or contradict ideas in the literature.
• provide support for the claim that a scholarly (or professional audience for the Professional and Technical Writing Award) audience would find persuasive.
• organize the support conceptually/analytically.
• be appropriate in style and tone for a scholarly audience (or a professional audience for the Professional and Technical Writing Award).
• show some rhetorical flair.

Competition is limited to students enrolled in the standard sections of Comp 126/150. Any Comp 126/Comp 150 faculty member may submit a paper.

There are two "tracks," Freshman/Sophomore and Junior/Senior. The track is determined by the level of the course in which the paper was written. Eligible papers may be disciplinary or interdisciplinary, theoretical or empirical, but should seek to contribute in some way to an academic literature.

There are two "tracks," Freshman/Sophomore and Junior/Senior. The track is determined by the level of the course in which the paper was written. Many of FLC’s courses help students learn to write the kind of texts they will compose as professionals post-graduation. These awards recognize the best student work in these genres. Nominations may include, but are not limited to, technical reports, senior seminar papers in the sciences, legal briefs, business analyses, proposals, plans, and investigative journalism projects.