SCIO is delighted to announce Michaelmas Term 2024’s Prize winners. The prizes are awarded to students who demonstrate academic excellence in their research essays, British Culture seminars, or overall academic performance throughout the term (the Alumni prize).
Michaelmas’s awardees include:
Alumni Prize
- Andrew Bruner
Academic Prizes
- Mia Golding
- Olivia Holtgren
- Sarah Grace Smith
- Josiah Troutner
- Cara Young
Prize winners shared a bit about their work and the reasons why they find it important:
Andrew Bruner (Taylor University, IN)
Spending 102 days abroad with SCIO was one of the best decisions I made while a Taylor student, and certainly the highlight of my college experience. I studied primarily international relations, learning from some incredible scholars through coursework including UK Foreign Policy and Middle East Studies. I also was glad to participate in the course, “Sharing a Crowded Planet,” which gave me an academic opportunity I had never had before to explore the intersection between faith, science, history, and climate. Finally, my capstone research project focused on the energy and climate implications of artificial intelligence, a subject which I found extremely timely and engaging. Studying all of these things has not only helped develop me professionally and academically, but has also helped me gain a richer understanding of the world and of myself. Personally, I was challenged by SCIO’s academic rigor, the experience of living in a foreign country, and the opportunity to grow my faith and worldview during a unique, challenging, and beautiful season of life—one on which I will always look back fondly.
Olivia Holtgren (Bethel University, IN)
My time at Oxford through SCIO was profoundly transformative. During my time in the City of Dreaming Spires, I took Creative Writing, Victorian Literature, and Modern Literature tutorials. I also wrote a research thesis examining the question, “How do invasive species change the way we treat nature in eco-poetry?” Through this thesis, I was able to combine my literary and environmental interests, exploring how the metaphors we use to conceptualize invasive species (either as the “immigrant” or the “colonizer”) determine our response to invasive species management. Through my time at SCIO, I have obtained greater clarity with integrating my various passions into one expression of who I am; I have also learned to abide with myself in deeper grace. And of course, I had the incredible blessing of living in a beautiful, exciting new place an ocean away from home, all the while challenging and expanding my previous conceptions of home and community.
Sarah Grace Smith (John Brown University, AR)
It was truly a joy to study alongside wonderful peers in such a beautiful city. While in Oxford, most of my efforts were dedicated to studying modern literature, whether through my tutorials in Modern Literature in English and British Drama after the Second World War or within my research project on the relationship between clothing and the self in Nella Larsen and Virginia Woolf’s novels. Thanks to the knowledge and passion of my tutors, discussing the themes and linguistic choices within the literature of this time period with my tutors was both fascinating and incredibly beneficial in refining my thinking and writing. As a result of these conversations and the books I read over the course of the semester, I have developed an interest in frailty of language within literature that I hope to continue pursuing in my studies.
Mia Golding (Southeastern University, FL)
During my time in Oxford, I studied Literature in the Romantic Era, Creative Writing, and conducted my research on how Romantic writers used Hellenistic myth and ideals to explore human longing. Oxford, as both a city and institution, seemed to me to be deeply Romantic, stimulating the mind and unlocking within oneself streams of thought and creativity previously unknown. Each time I walked past the many colleges, the beauty of its history and architecture leaving me awestruck, or entered one of the many Bodleian libraries, my heart stirred in ways it hadn’t before. I think of C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Oscar Wilde, and many other of those revered writers, and understand why they were so often inspired—what a privilege it was to experience some of that inspiration myself! My time in Oxford could not have been what it was without my lovely tutors and the SCIO faculty and staff — I will cherish the experience and what I’ve gained from it, intellectually and relationally, forever.
Josiah Troutner (Northwestern College, IA)
During my time at SCIO, I fell in love with the city of Oxford as well as its ethos. Its refined, cloistered, and contemplative rhythms sunk into my bones and awoke my passions for scholarship. While researching Jewish history, I became absorbed in questions deep enough to fill several lifetimes’ work. During Michaelmas term I completed wide-ranging essays on the Qumran community, the Maccabees, Philo, the Septuagint, synagogal mosaics, and more. I also completed a research project comparing the Binding of Isaac in Jubilees, Philo, and Josephus, all of which has culminated in a strong desire to continue research in post-Biblical Judaism.
Cara Young (Taylor University, IN)
While in Oxford, I took Psychology and Literature for my British culture course and Victorian Literature and Creative Writing for my primary and secondary tutorials. I researched women’s mental health and how it has been represented in literature through the texts The Bell Jar and My Year of Rest and Relaxation for my research course. Through the experience of taking these courses in Oxford, I gained, not only experience, but confidence in my own ability to engage academically with literature and think critically about its influence on time periods in the past as well as our world as it is today. I was given the invaluable opportunity to study under the guidance of brilliant tutors and discuss the work I was doing with my peers who always showed an immense interest in knowledge, beauty, and truth.
SCIO wishes the prize winners a very happy and successful future!