Contact: Bruce Conley, News Information Director
Phone: (605) 274-5526
Fax: (605) 274-4903
e-mail: bruce_conley@augie.edu
www.augie.edu

November 12, 2003

Students eligible for $100 cash prize from Dakota Conference

Augustana College's Center for Western Studies today announced it will award a $100 cash prize to a college student who writes and presents a winning paper at the 36th annual Dakota Conference, April 23-24, 2004.

Cash awards are also presented for the best papers by professional and amateur scholars.

Augustana College students and students from other institutions have received cash awards in the past, but beginning with the 2004 conference this award will be reserved exclusively for students.

The Cedric Cummins Award, honoring the late University of South Dakota professor of history, will be given to the student who writes the best paper on the general topic of the Northern Plains or on the conference's theme for that year. The theme for the upcoming Dakota Conference is "The Great(er) Plains: Land and Water issues for the Twenty-first Century."

Noted environmental historian Dr. James Sherow, Kansas State University, author of the forthcoming "Their Days Were as Grass: An Ecostory of the Central Grasslands, 1780-1870," will be the featured humanities speaker. Other speakers are Dr. Robert Steensma, University of Utah, who will speak on the environmental writings of novelist Wallace Stegner, Lakota author Lydia Whirlwind Soldier, and South Dakota Poet Laureate David Allan Evans, South Dakota State University. Whirlwind Soldier and Evans will read from their poetry.

The Dakota Conference is made possible in part by grants from the South Dakota Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Augustana College Mellon Fund Committee, and other supporters.

Conference registration is free to any student presenting a paper. Additional information about the conference and the student award is available from conference director Dr. Harry F. Thompson at harry_thompson@augie.edu or at www.augie.edu/CWS/