NJ History Awards for students
2022 Paul A.
Stellhorn Undergraduate New Jersey History Award
by Richard Waldron
The Stellhorn Award
recognizes excellence in undergraduate writing about New Jersey
history. It honors an outstanding and much-loved historian of New Jersey,
the late Paul A. Stellhorn.
In 2022, there will be
one or more awards in two categories, one for course or seminar papers, the
other for senior theses. Awards will consist of a certificate and a cash
payment of $250. The sponsors will present the award(s) at the New
Jersey Historical Commission’s annual conference in November 2022. The New
Jersey Studies Academic Alliance will invite the recipient(s) to speak about
her, his, or their work at one of the Alliance’s 2023 meetings.
Stellhorn Award
recipients’ papers will be eligible for publication in the online journal, New
Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, https://njs.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/njs.
2021 Recipient
Senior Thesis: Emily Borowski, American Studies Department, Rutgers University (New Brunswick), for her senior thesis titled “Eugenics in New Jersey: How the New Jersey State Village for Epileptics Perpetuated Eugenics Throughout the State.” NB: The paper was published in the January 2022 issue of New Jersey Studies.
Submission Criteria
- Papers or theses may be about any subject in New Jersey’s history and may come from history and other departments, and from institutions in New Jersey and elsewhere.
- Nominated works should be truly outstanding in all respects (see evaluation criteria, below).
- Senior theses are eligible for the award and will be judged separately in their own category.
- Papers or theses must be nominated by the professors for whose courses students wrote them or who mentored the thesis or served as one of its readers. Students may not nominate their own papers or theses.
- Nominations should include a discussion of why the paper or thesis is award worthy.
- Papers or theses must have been written by undergraduate students attending colleges (including community colleges) or universities during calendar 2020, 2021, or 2022.
- Papers by current graduate students are not eligible unless a student wrote the paper as an undergraduate in 2019, 2020, or 2021. NOTE: The New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance sponsors an annual award for graduate student writing about New Jersey history. Contact Professor Paul Israel at pisrael@rutgers.edu or visit njsaa.org for criteria.
- Email nominating letters and papers by June 1, 2022, to acrelius@optonline.net, or surface-mail nominating letters and four (4) copies of each paper by the same date to Richard Waldron, 150 Flock Rd., Hamilton, NJ 08619; 609.222.424
- NOTE: The NJSAA has established the Marc Mappen Student Research Scholarship to assist high school, undergraduate, and graduate student research. Awards of up to $300 will be made in March and October of each year. Visit njsaa.org for requirements and application procedure or email the committee chair, Professor Melissa Ziobrio, mziobrio@monmouth.edu
Receipt of a Mappen Scholarship is NOT a requirement for the Stellhorn Award.
Evaluation Criteria
A paper or thesis submitted for the Stellhorn Award will be evaluated on its narrative strength, the thoroughness of its author’s research (mastery of sources and the standard forms of historical citation), and analysis of the paper’s subject, including its historical context. A nominated paper should, therefore, tell a good story, explain its subject’s significance and how the subject changed over time, and utilize a broad array of relevant primary and secondary sources. Evaluators are historians the sponsors have chosen for the breadth and depth of their knowledge of New Jersey and American history.
Sponsors
The Stellhorn Award’s sponsors are the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance; the New Jersey Historical Commission, New Jersey Department of State; Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries; and the New Jersey Caucus of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference.
Donate to Support NJSAA Student Awards!
The New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance sponsors three awards for students:
- The Paul A. Stellhorn Undergraduate New Jersey History Award recognizes outstanding undergraduate research and writing on a New Jersey history topic
- The Graduate Paper Award recognizes superior research and writing by a graduate student about a New Jersey history topic
- The Marc Mappen Student Research Scholarship assists New Jersey history research projects by high school, undergraduate, and graduate student
