The Stephen Jay Gould Award is open to all students, both undergraduate and graduate, regardless of their department and major.  Darwin is often cited as an example of a person whose ideas “revolutionized” the way we view and understand our world. What Darwin did for our understanding of nature is similar in impact to what Einstein did for our understanding of physics and the universe. Few ideas have had such fundamental and far-reaching effects. The topic to be addressed in this year’s Stephen Jay Gould Award is:

"The impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution on particular academic fields of inquiry."

In your paper, you must address how Darwin's ideas, specifically his theory, have impacted a particular discipline such as sociology, political science, economics, biology, chemistry, philosophy or others.  If you prefer, you may also include more than one discipline to broaden the scope of your paper.  The paper must focus on the effect (such as causing or influencing a paradigm shift within a discipline) of Darwin's ideas on an academic discipline, not simply iterate a description of the particulars of Darwin's theory.

Your paper must be submitted in triplicate along with a letter of nomination from an Eastern Illinois University faculty member that supports the quality of your paper to the Darwin Day Committee in the Department of Biological Sciences main office (room 2070, Life Sciences Building) before 5:00 PM on January 21, 2008.

Attn: Darwin Day Committee

Eastern Illinois University

Department of Biological Sciences

600 Lincoln Avenue

Charleston, Illinois 61920-3099

The following rules will be used by the Darwin Day Committee to select an Eastern Illinois University student to receive the 2008 Stephen Jay Gould Award:

1. The student must be enrolled for a minimum of nine semester hours at Eastern Illinois University.
 

2. The student must be in good standing at the time the award is conferred and when the award

    check is issued.
 

3. The recipient must write a paper on the topic specified by the Darwin Day Committee and that

    meets the following technical criteria:

    a. The paper must be a typed document that is ten to twenty pages in length (excluding the list of

        references, and all tables, figures and appendices), double-spaced, using 12-point Times New

        Roman font.

    b. The subject matter of the paper should focus on Darwin’s ideas on evolution in relation to the

        specific theme established by the Darwin Day Committee for that academic year.

    c. References should be included if appropriate or necessary to the paper. This requirement will

        vary according to discipline. For example, in the physical and biological sciences, data used to

        support or formulate arguments must be cited from peer-reviewed sources. Alternatively, in

        particular philosophical papers, peer reviewed sources of data may be irrelevant; rather, the

        philosophical analysis of the rationality of an argument is important.

    d. All citations in the text and the list of references section should follow the guidelines

        generally accepted within each discipline. If citing other people’s work in a paper, then a list

        of the full citations should be included along with the paper submitted. In biology, citations in

        the body of a text typically include the last name of the author and the year it was

        published.  For example; (Williams et al. 1996) refers to a paper published by Williams and

        co-authors in 1996.

    e. All tables and figures should be appended at the end of the paper, after the Literature Cited

        section, and should be referenced in the text where appropriate.
 

4. A letter of nomination from an Eastern Illinois University faculty member who supports the quality

     of the student’s paper should also be submitted directly to the Darwin Day Committee. It is the

     student’s responsibility to ensure that this letter is received by the application deadline.
 

Paper quality will be judged according to the following criteria:

    1. Scholarliness/originality
    2. Prose/construction/style
    3. Appropriateness of references, where applicable
    4. Coherence/clarity/rationality/analyses

We would like to thank Jane and Herbert Lasky for funding this annual award.

For more information, contact Dr. Gary Fritz.