Student News

Ultimately, everything we do centers around our students. Here is a sampling of their incredible work.

Graduate Student News

William Blake’s research, “The Brooding Spirit of the Law: Supreme Court Justices Reading Dissents from the Bench,” was featured in The New York Times on March 8, 2010.

Daniel Nogueira Budny and Matt Buehler were awarded, respectively, 2010 and 2009 Boren Fellowships to support their research. Budny researches leftist parties in Latin American democracies. Buehler studies political parties in North African authoritarian states.

Michael Dennis received a Dissertation Support Fellowship in 2010 from the Social Science Research Council’s Eurasia Program to support his project, “Chechen Refugees and the Politics of Violence.”

Roy Germano won the 2010 Michael H. Granof Outstanding Graduate Student Award. Germano researches the conditions shaping international migration from the Third World to the advanced industrialized world.

Austin Hart was awarded a dissertation improvement grant in 2009 from the National Science Foundation for his project, “Campaigning for the Economy: Campaign Rhetoric and the Economic Vote in the U.S. and Mexico.”

Regina Goodnow was awarded a 2010-11 Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to support her investigation of constitutional change in Ukraine.

Pete Mohanty received the Amy Eckert Award for Ethics and International Relations at the International Studies Association-West conference in 2009 for his paper, “The Multitude and the Polis: Inclusion and Exclusion Considered in a Global Context.”

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Undergraduate Student News

Established in 1898, the William Jennings Bryan Prize was the university’s first endowment. The Department of Government awards this prize to students who write the top theses in each year’s honors class. The 2010 winners are:

Peter Carey, “Connecting the Dots: A Social Network Analysis of Law Enforcement’s Role in the Decline of Jemaah Islamiyah”

John Lewis, “United Nation: Bipartisanship as Signaling in the Fight for International Institutions”

Shane O’Neal, “Humanitarian Intervention that Promotes Self Determination: An Argument for Community-based Understandings of Human Rights”

Alexa Sendukas, “A Global Analysis of Women in Political Office: The Disjuncture between Elections and Appointments”

Nathan Abell received the 2010 first place prize for Best Undergraduate Student Paper at the Illinois State University National Conference for Students of Political Science for his paper, “Theory and Practice of Structural Agenda Setting: A Case Study of U.S. HIV/AIDS Policy from 1979 to 1989.”

Ryan Cooper won the second place prize in 2009 at the 17th Annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research for his paper, “Meaning versus Authority: A Defense of Extra-Constitutional Prerogative.”

Robbie Earle, in 2009, won a George H. Mitchell Undergraduate Student Award for Academic Excellence for his thesis, “African Voices and Policy Effort: Why Public Opinion Matters in the Fight Against AIDS.”

Cecilia Lopez and Rachel Wade received 2009 Ted Strauss Civic Internship Awards. Lopez worked as a government relations fellow at the Hispanic College Fund. Wade participated in the Investigative Internship Program at Georgetown University Law School’s Criminal Justice Clinic.

Johnny Meyer is the 2010 Grand Prize winner of the George H. Mitchell Undergraduate Student Award for Academic Excellence. Meyer is also a 2010 Dean’s Distinguished Graduate. Meyer’s original play, “American Volunteers,” draws from his experience in the U.S. Army. His honors thesis was “Elections and Ethnic Conflict: Party Fragmentation and Intracommunity Competition in Iraq, 2005-2009.”

Anjali Mohan, a Dean’s Distinguished Graduate in 2009, led student efforts on the Barbara Jordan Statue Project along with fellow members of the Orange Jackets, a student service organization.