UW-System’s Liberal Arts Essay Competition

UW-La Crosse Deadline January 31, 2013

Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin System Advisory Group on the Liberal Arts (SAGLA).

Eligibility

This competition is open to any UW System undergraduate student in academic good standing (UW College or four-year institution).

Award

Three awards for $2,000 each are available (one to a student from the UW Colleges and two to students from the UW comprehensive and doctoral institutions). UW-L is a comprehensive institution.

This Year’s Topic

Over the past two years, we have seen a Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election and a presidential race that both generated a great deal of civic discourse. How has your liberal education helped you process, develop informed opinions, and make decisions about what you see and hear and guided your participation as a citizen? How has your liberal education helped you interact with people with whom you disagree on the events that have taken place?

Feel free to choose a single experience or an array of experiences, whichever best fits the development of your own liberal education.  Your essay should create a clear picture of the experience(s) and should also make a clear connection between your experience(s) and your liberal education.

As you plan your essay, you may wish to check on the liberal education learning outcomes at  http://www.aacu.org/leap/vision.cfm. Some of these outcomes could help inform your understanding of the larger framework of liberal education.

Submission

The deadline for submission of essay and transcript is January 31, 2013. Please note that the UW System webpage about this competition has a deadline in February. The February deadline is the date by which our office has to submit the finalists we’ve selected for consideration at a state-wide level. Make sure you submit your materials to us by January 31, 2013, or you will miss the deadline and we won’t be able to consider your submission! Submit the below items electronically to provost@uwlax.edu as a single .pdf file. Only electronic submissions will be accepted.

    1. Title page with the following information
      • Title of essay
      • Your name
      • Your major
      • The name of the institution you attend
      • Your college
      • Your home address
      • Your e-mail address
      • Your telephone number
      • The following statement: “I hereby affirm that this is an original essay and my own work.”
    2. Original essay:
      • Submission must be 1,000-1,250 words in length.
      • Submission must be typed and double-spaced.
    3. Unofficial UW-L transcript available on WINGS.

     

Selection Notification

  • Three essays will be selected by a UW-L review committee for submission to the UW System Advisory Group on the Liberal Arts. Applicants of the three selected essays will be notified by late February.
  • Final selection of winning essays will be determined by a group of judges from the UW System Advisory Group on the Liberal Arts (SAGLA). Recipients will be notified by UW System in spring 2013.

Essays from Previous Winners