Graduate Students
The Department has a graduate enrollment of about 90 students at all stages of their graduate careers. A self-governing History Graduate Student Association serves as a liaison between students and faculty. Two graduate students serve on the Department's Graduate Studies Committee, which administers the graduate program.
2006-2007 Graduate Student Representatives:
2007 Honors and Awards
Christine Sears will be starting a tenure track job at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, and Christian Koot will be taking up a tenure track job at Towson University. Alan Meyer recently started a full-time job as a civilian historian with the United States Air Force near the Pentagon. And Ryan Thompson has accepted a tenure track position at Cleveland State University in Chattanooga,Tenn.
A number of students have been awarded prestigious grants from both the University and national competitions to continue working on their dissertations during the coming year. Jennifer Armiger has been granted not only a UD Dissertation Award for the 2007-2008 academic year, but also the American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women and the University of Delaware's newly minted Women's Studies Dissertation Fellowship. Ben Schwantes has also been awarded a UD Dissertation Award, and Hillary Murtha has been awarded a UD Competitive Award, both for the 2007-2008 academic year.
Lyndsay Rago scooped up the second UD Competitive Award this year, and then went on to receive the Coordinating Conference of Women in the Historical Profession (CCWH)/Berkshire Graduate Student Award for dissertation research. Two of our continuing graduate students will be gracing the McNeil Center in Philadelphia as they continue writing their dissertations: Ken Cohen has been awarded a year-long Cosortium Fellowship and Zara Anishanslin-Bernhardt a year-long Consortium/Barra Fellowship. And Dan Claro was awarded a year-long McNeil Dissertation Fellowship to work at Winterthur in the coming year. Lily Santoro has scooped up not only a prestigious grant from the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, KY, but also a Peterson Fellowship to work at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA, and from our own History Department, our annual William Williams Award for outstanding work in early American history.
Elise Ciregna has been given a New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Grant recently; Karen Ryder received a Mellon ellowship for research at the Virginia Historical Society; Katie Turner will enjoy a short-term Winterthur research grant; Michelle Mormul has been awarded a short-term Program in Early Economy fellowship to work in Philadelphia; and Patricia Keller has landed a 2007 Research Project Grant from the Center for Craft, Creativity & Design in North Carolina. At the Maryland Historical Magazine, Patricia Anderson has been appointed editor.
In our own department, in addition to the William Williams award, Heather Boyd and Mike Sparrow have been recognized for their outstanding work as Teaching Assistants with the Stanley J. and Marion Goldfus Memorial Award; and Christine Sears has been awarded the first John Munroe prize for superior teaching in her own courses in the History Department. At UD's recent Gels Student Research on Women Conference, Jennifer Vess, won the second place prize (graduate division) for her paper, "'Home Influences' and 'Home Joys': American Women in World War I and the Recreation of America Overseas."
And to continue this stellar list, Stephanie Holyfield's dissertation prospectus was accepted to the Newcomen dissertation colloquium at this year's Business History Conference, and Bonnie Maxwell won the Raymond Callahan Prize for the years 2003 to 2006, for most outstanding member of the MALS program, with special mention of her superior thesis.
As always, our grads have also been busy presenting their work at numerous conferences and seminars around the country and beyond, shining light on their achievements and making us all very proud. Cudos to all!
2006 Honors and Awards
John Davies and Katherine Turner have been awarded two of the University's Dissertation Fellow Awards, and Jennifer Moses won a University Graduate Fellows Award, all for the coming academic year.
Among the awards that our own department confers on graduate students, Andy Bozanic has been recognized for his outstanding work as a Teaching Assistant with the Stanley J. and Marion Goldfus Memorial Award. This year's prize for the Alumni Award for Best Printed Article or Seminar Paper, a submission judged by a committee of former chairs of the History Department, has been conferred on Janneken Smucker. And the departmental William H. Williams Scholarship in Early American History, which is divided equally between graduate and undergraduate students doing outstanding scholarship in early American history, goes to Ted Sickler.
Jennifer Armiger recently received the New Jersey Historical Commission's Smith Dissertation Fellowship for 2006, as well as one of the prestigious Rovensky Fellowships for Dissertations in American Business and Economic History, which is sponsored in part by the Business History Conference.
Michelle Mormul has received a Travel and Data Grant from the Economic History Association to conduct research on her dissertation.
At the recent Geis Student Research on Women Conference, Seabrook Jones won second place among a number of Graduate papers presented across numerous disciplines for her paper on Chester County women's economic lives in the early 1800s.