The Center for Research on Vermont at the University of Vermont (UVM) has awarded prizes to three undergraduate students for their superior projects on Vermont research topics.
    The recipient of the 2009 Andrew  E. Nuquist Award for Outstanding Student Research on a Vermont Topic is Elizabeth Kelley of Westborough, Mass. Her project, “The Implications of the Greening of Social Capital: Evidence from Bristol, Vermont,” was  the Middlebury College (MC) environmental studies major’s senior thesis. The project was advised and nominated for the award by MC Economics Professor Jonathan Isham.
    For only the third time in the Nuquist Award’s 27-year history, the award committee voted to give special mention to a project, that of Middlebury College senior Benjamin Robins of Chappaqua, N.Y. His senior thesis, “Three Schools, Three Outcomes: The Students’ Army Training Corps at Middlebury, Dartmouth, and the University of Vermont,” was advised and nominated for the award by Amy Morsman, MC History Professor.
    The recipient of the George B. Bryan Award for Excellence in Vermont Research in 2009 is Gregory McDermott of New Canaan, Conn., a Middlebury College senior majoring in history. He received the Bryan Award for his project “‘Leave It or Sink with It’: The Rise and Fall of the Vermont Know-Nothing Party.” MC History Professor James Ralph advised the project and nominated it for the award.
    Center for Research on Vermont Director Robert Rodgers presided at the May 1 awards ceremony at the center’s annual meeting, held at the University of Vermont. The prizes were presented with assistance from Vermont Life, which cosponsors the Nuquist Award.
    In nominating Kelley’s project for the Nuquist Award, Dr. Isham said that she had examined the networks of relationships known as social capital and their changes over a two-hundred-year span in a Vermont town, thereby showing that Robert Putnam’s thesis about the decline of social capital does not hold in the case of Bristol, Vt. Second, he noted that she discusses the changes that have occurred in the town through the lens of the changes in social capital. Adding that “her case study of the Bristol gravel pit proposal—tensions about who we are as Vermonters and how we choose to use our working landscape—will resound in many ways,” he suggested that her project “does just that, exploring the lessons of Bristol’s two-century transformation for this challenging new century.”
    MC senior Benjamin Robins received special mention from the Nuquist Award Committee for his senior thesis examining the role of the short-lived Students’ Army Training Corps at three institutions of higher learning: Middlebury College, Dartmouth College, and the University of Vermont. Robins traveled extensively to piece together the story of the three institutions and their markedly different experiences working with the government. Wrote Dr. Morsman in her letter of nomination, “His final product is enlightening about life in early twentieth-century Vermont. It also advances scholars’ understanding of how this government-education alliance worked in a time of war, and it makes an excellent case for the study of local history.”
    Middlebury College student Gregory McDermott  received the Bryan Award for his seminar paper exploring the rise and fall of the Vermont Know-Nothing Party. As advisor James Ralph commented in his letter nominating McDermott’s paper for the award, “The 1850s was a decade of tremendous political turbulence in Vermont and throughout the country . . . that ultimately ended with the ascendancy of the Republican Party. That development was only possible, his paper contends, because of the role of the Know-Nothings . . . and reminds us of that short-lived party’s pivotal role in the evolution of Vermont politics.”
    The Center for Research on Vermont offers the Bryan Award annually in memory of Dr. George B. Bryan (1939–1996), UVM Professor of Theatre and two-term center director. A prolific and internationally known scholar, generous colleague, and inspiring mentor, Bryan was particularly well known in Vermont for his research documenting the state’s rich theatrical tradition. The Bryan Award consists of the publication We Vermonters: Reflections on the Past—a collection of essays, published in cooperation with the Center for Research on Vermont, from the acclaimed “We Vermonters” humanities series which Bryan directed in 1990–1991—and a cash prize from a special fund established in his memory by friends and colleagues.
    The Nuquist Award has been offered annually by the Center for Research on Vermont since 1982, with the assistance of Vermont Life Magazine, for a culminating study on a Vermont topic. The award, which consists of a cash prize from the Center for Research on Vermont and a publication from Vermont Life, is given in memory of Andrew E. Nuquist (1905–1975), UVM teacher, scholar, and student of Vermont.
    The award-winning projects—along with finalists—will be deposited in the Department of Special Collections in Bailey/Howe Library at the University of Vermont, where they will be available to researchers upon request. The Center also plans to make the winning projects available online via the Center for Research on Vermont’s Web site at <www.uvm.edu/~crvt>.
    The deadline for the next round of the Nuquist and Bryan awards is March 1, 2010. University and college undergraduate students who complete projects demonstrating superior treatment of a Vermont theme between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2009, are eligible to enter their work in the 2010 competitions. Submissions may be received at any time, not just in March of the award year.
    Anyone wanting to submit a project should send a letter of intent by February 1, 2010, to Coordinator Kristin Peterson-Ishaq, Center for Research on Vermont, 589 Main Street, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT  05401-3439. For additional information, please call 802-656-4389 or email <crv@uvm.edu> or visit the Center’s Web site at <www.uvm.edu/~crvt>.