Written Collaboratively by the Writing Center Tutors

JUNEAU, Alaska – Undergraduate scholarship remains a major focus of the university. Over the past three years, the annual academic journal Summit: The University of Alaska Southeast’s Collection of Exceptional Academic Works has published many undergraduate students’ scholarly work. Summit is run in conjunction with the Ernestine Hayes Award for Excellence in Essay Writing by the UAS Juneau Writing Center and has so far published nineteen students with a variety of disciplines and interests. This year, Summit will be launched as part of the UAS Authors’ Reception on April 22, 2022 with its first physical printing! Prior to this year, Summit has only appeared online. The Writing Center thanks everyone who submitted and to the panel of faculty and student judges. We would also like to express our gratitude for our wonderful tutor, Autumn Daigle, who created this year’s stunning cover. We would like to thank Student Government for funding the prize money, and to everyone else who has supported this publication, particularly Egan Library Dean Elise Tomlinson, who helped us immensely with the layout and printing of the journal.

The Writing Center congratulates UAS senior and writing tutor Sabrina Croft for winning the 2021/2022 Ernestine Hayes Award! Her essay “New Zealand False Killer Whale (Pseudorca crassidens) Spatial Associations with Common Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and Longline Fisheries” impressed the judges with its strong scientific ethos, its display of meticulous research, and her distinguishable personal voice. 

In regards to her win, Croft states, “Though my time at UAS has been tragically brief, I feel that my writing has made leaps and bounds while I have been here, and that is thanks most of all due to the instructors I have worked with, the wonderful classmates that I have been able to bounce ideas off of, and of course the help I received from the highly-esteemed Writing Center. I feel honored to have been able to display my work and to be recognized by such a distinguished community. I will take what I have learned here at UAS with me wherever I may go. I am so grateful and honored to have won the award.” 

This year, in addition to Croft, nine other UAS undergraduate authors will be published, including Randy J. Brannan Jr., Olive Brend, Keefer Brown, Carolyn Fenno, Krystal Gray, Francesca Johnson, Skaydu.û Jules, and Elizabeth Tallmadge. A board of student and faculty judges rated the essays, given to them anonymously, to determine which would be published and who would receive the Ernestine Hayes Award.

In addition to print copies,the journal in its completion will be available on the Scholarworks@UA website and the Writing Center website at https://uas.alaska.edu/juneau/writing-center/summit.html. We hope you enjoy reading this collection, and if you haven’t already, be sure to check out the previous editions as well on our website and via Scholarworks@UA. This project will also continue next year, and we encourage you to consider submitting academic essays of your own!