by Shaelene Moler, Writing Tutor, UAS Writing Center

Summit: The UAS Writing Center’s Collection of Exceptional Academic Works is an undergraduate journal that showcases UAS undergraduates’ academic writing. The submission period will run from December 1st, 2022, to February 1st, 2023. All submissions will be considered for UAS’s Ernestine Hayes Award for Excellence in Essay Writing, which awards $250 to the student submission that exhibits the strongest academic work.

Summit was founded on the Writing Center’s philosophy that essays are like mountains, with published essays being the highest point of attainment or aspiration: the summit. It is an academic journal written by students, for students, and put together by the Writing Center tutors to help students of all disciplines enter the world of publishing. Last year, the Writing Center printed the first physical edition of Summit 2022 featuring essays in science, history, literature, culture, and more!

Last year, the Ernestine Hayes Award went to Sabrina Croft, a marine biology major who graduated last spring, for her essay “New Zealand False Killer Whale (Pseudorca crassidens) Spatial Associations with Common Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and Longline Fisheries.” Her essay was selected by a board of both faculty and student judges who rated all the essays, which were given to them anonymously, for its extensive scientific knowledge and display of detailed research with an impressive score of 134/150.

In her acceptance speech, Croft touched on her inspiration for the essay, the current state of false killer whale populations, and how she grew as a person pursuing a degree in marine biology here in Juneau. Enthusiastically, she explained: “The first [fact I learned] was this: we still don’t know much about the false killer whales… Biologists are still at a point where we need more baseline information if we are going to make conservation decisions on false killer whales.” She continued, “The second fact I learned came from living in the town of Juneau itself… I learned that many of my classmates, the UAS staff, and other Juneau community members are or have been involved in the commercial fishing industry at one point or another. They certainly were not the villains my formerly landlocked self thought when pondering the selfish, destructive, greedy fisherfolk sucking the ocean dry of her lively bounty.” She playfully waved her hands in a dismissive manner and chuckled, “that was not what I saw. I’d realized something very important while going to school here in Alaska. That villainy that we see in Hollywood productions doesn’t exist. The reality is much more along the lines of folks just trying to get by and put food on the table for themselves and for their loved ones, and fishing just happens to be the way that they do that, and they do in fact care about the environment.”

With Writing Specialist Jessy Goodman and the dedicated team of student tutors, the fourth edition of Summit is about to be underway! Goodman will advise the production of Summit along with student tutors Emily Bowman, Autumn Daigle, Francesca Johnson, Sophia Gimm, Catie Miller, and Shaelene Grace Moler. Tutors who may join the WC team in the spring will also be part of the Summit team. This year, Summit will again by published both physically and digitally in the spring.

The Writing Center team encourages undergraduate UAS students from all three campuses (as well as remote UAS students!) to submit their work. The team is excited to see the wide range of our student body’s interests and talents. For more information, check out the Writing Center’s Summit page: https://uas.alaska.edu/juneau/writing-center/summit.html, email the WC at uas.writingcenter@alaska.edu, or follow the WC on Instagram (@uaswritingcenter) or Facebook (@uasjuneauwritingcenter).