All undergraduates at the University of Kansas are invited to enter the annual Philip Whitcomb Essay Contest.
$500 is awarded for the winning essay
Please deliver three copies of the essay to Nunemaker Center by 4:00pm on Friday, April 18, 2008. Students should identify their essay by listing only their student ID number on the top right hand corner of every page. Students must provide a detachable cover page with their name, student ID, contact information and title of the essay.
Any current KU undergraduate may enter the Contest. The guidelines state that essays should address "the relationship of knowledge, thought, and action in public affairs and public policy". The Contest committee interprets this broadly. Topics may be political, for example, but they may just as well be intellectual, artistic, literary, scientific, or technological. What is important is that submitted essays make plain the importance of their topic, that they be written for a wide public, and that they deal, in one fashion or another, with knowledge, thought, and action. Essays on an appropriate topic, and derived from an honors essay, a term paper, a research project, would be welcome.
Essays should be no longer than 3,000 words. They should be submitted to the Honors Program at Nunemaker Center (1506 Engel Road; 864-4225). The due date for the 2007 Contest is Friday, April 18, 2008
*Students must provide a detachable cover page with their name, student ID, contact information and title of the essay. Students should list their student ID number on each page of their essay.
Entries will be judged by a faculty committee. The author of the winning essay will receive a cash award of $500, a prize book, and recognition on the Whitcomb Plaque (mounted at Nunemaker Center).
Philip Wright Whitcomb, born in Topeka in 1891, received his B.A. from Washburn College in 1910. He went on to study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar from 1911-1914, eventually receiving an M.A. From 1914 until 1978 he served as European correspondent for several major U.S. newspapers and wire services. In 1978 he returned to Kansas to study philosophy, which had long been an interest of his. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Kansas in 1981.
Throughout his life Philip Whitcomb demonstrated a deep commitment to intellectual honesty and accomplishment, to the integration of diverse fields of knowledge, and to the task of relating fundamental knowledge to problems of broad human concern. The purpose of the Whitcomb Essay Contest is to commemorate his life and to promote the values he held dear.
Read the 2008 winning essay by Andrew MacDonald
Read the 2007 winning essay by Annie McEnroe
Read the 2006 winning essay by Sridhar Reddy
