History Student Awards
History gives the following annual awards to outstanding students.
Arthur E. Gravatt Scholarship
This annual $500 scholarship is made possible through a generous grant to history by Arthur E. Gravatt and Margaret Dowell-Gravatt, MD. The History Awards Committee will select an outstanding undergraduate history major who is a continuing student currently in his or her junior or senior year, with priority given to financial need.
Thomas and Margaret Meehan History Scholarship
This annual $500 scholarship is made to a student with “junior or senior class standing” (i.e., in his or her sophomore or junior year) with a cumulative grade-point average of 3.5 or above. Financial need may be considered but is not required. The recipient will be nominated by history faculty and selected by the awards committee.
Barbara Bennett Peterson History Award
This annual $500 award is made to a full-time history major. The recipient “shall have senior class standing and be a continuing (i.e., returning) student while receiving the award.” In awarding this scholarship, there is no stipulation regarding financial need. The recipient will be nominated by history faculty and selected by the History Awards Committee.
Robert Wayne Smith Book Award
The recipient will receive $25 credit toward book purchases at the OSU Bookstore. Awarded by history faculty, in cooperation with the OSU Bookstore, it is presented at the annual Phi Alpha Theta history honorary initiation and reception in the spring. Selection honors the author of the best research paper or review essay submitted in a history course during the academic year. Essays to be considered are submitted by the course instructors.
Graduate Student Essay Award
$200 awarded at the annual Phi Alpha Theta history honorary initiation and senior reception to a History of Science graduate student or an MAIS graduate student (with a major in history) who submitted the best essay demonstrating substantial original research or historiographical analysis (7500 words or less). Each submitted essay must be accompanied by a letter of support from a History Department faculty member.
Awards are presented at the SHPR Awards ceremony held annually at the end of Spring Term.
Student inductions into Phi Alpha Theta are also held during the ceremony.
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2012 History Awards Ceremony
Gravatt Awards for outstanding seminar papers were presented to Samantha Beattie and Aimee Hisey. Beattie, who was honored in 2011 with a Meehan Award, wrote “The Triumphant Minority: Soviet Film in the Silent Era” in Bill Husband’s Stalinism and Soviet Society seminar. Professor Nicole von Germeten nominated Aimee Hisey for “Isabel: Her Legitimacy, Her Sexuality, Her Legacy,” written in her Witchcraft and Sexuality in Early Modern Latin America and Europe seminar.
Two Thomas and Margaret Meehan Awards are given annually to non-graduating students of high academic achievement. This year, Professors Bob Nye and Bill 
Husband nominated Jandee Todd, while Kara Ritzheimer and Lisa Sarasohn put forward Emily Schwab. Steven McLain received the prestigious Barbara Bennett Peterson Award, given for scholarship and character. McLain, who was nominated by Professors Paul Kopperman and Jon Katz was recognized both for his superb academic work and his dedicated work as a student representative on the Holocaust Memorial Committee.
Robert Wayne Smith Book Awards recognize outstanding papers written in OSU history courses during the academic year. This year, three deserving honorees emerged: Travis Cook, “Stalin, Party of One: A Look at Political Resistance to the Agricultural Policies Stalin Endorsed from 1928 to 1934”; Samantha Lyn-Metz, “Women and their Role in the Middle Ages”;
Christopher Robinson, “The Conservation Legacy of Gifford Pinchot and the U.S. Forest Service.”
Andy Hahn received the Mary Jo and Robert Nye Award for best graduate student paper. Nominated by Professor Anita Guerrini, Hahn’s paper—“The Nature Institute: 
Goethe’s Presentation of Science in a public Setting”—was informed by his MA thesis on the biological and optical science of the Enlightenment and Romantic era poet, novelist and savant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society, inducted five new members. OSU requires higher levels of academic achievement I both history and general course than the minimums required by the national honorary, making an invitation to join the OSU chapter a meaningful achievement. This year’s initiates are Jandee Todd, Ashley Brydone-Jack, Julia Norwood, Chloe Tull, and Maanas Tripathi.
Many more excellent pictures from the event can be found on Mina Carson's Flikr site!
