Fisher Thesis Competition Winners Announced

The 2007 winners of the James L. Fisher Outstanding Thesis Award Competition at Illinois State University will be honored at an awards ceremony at noon on Monday, Dec. 3, in the Bone Student Center Old Main Room.

The overall University winner, whose thesis will be submitted to the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) regional Distinguished Masters’ Thesis Award Competition, is Sharon Engel representing the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences.  Her thesis is titled “HydridoTRIS(3,5-Dialkyltriazolyl)-Borates as Transition Metal and Lanthanide Complex Supporting Ligands.” 

The runner-up in the Fisher competition is Grant Shoffstall representing the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, whose thesis is “The Logic of Deterrence and Modern Myth and Ritual: An Interpretive Analysis of the Posthuman Mythos and Cryonic Suspension.”

College award recipients are Andrew MacGregor Johnson Hunt from the Department of Criminal Justice Sciences in the College of Applied Science and Technology for “America, Your Future Is In the Cards: Identity Systems from Prehistory to the Age of Surveillance,”  Tatiana Luchkina from the Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences for “Culture of Address in Oral Forms of Academic Interaction,” and Roxana Iacob from the School of Theatre in the College of Fine Arts for “Viscerality: Anatomical Technologies, Representation and the Phenomenon of Reception in Robert Wilson’s Work.”

For more information contact Rodney Custer, Associate Vice President for Graduate Studies, Research, and International Education, at (309) 438-3006 or Janis Swanton at (309) 438-8296.

All college winners receive $200 awards.  The university runner-up receives an additional $100 and the overall university winner receives an additional $200 plus $200 as Illinois State’s submission to the MAGS regional competition.

The award is named in honor of alumnus and former Illinois State University administrator James Fisher, who is president emeritus of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.  He also is president emeritus of Towson State University in Maryland and currently is a consultant on higher education and a professor of Leadership and Philanthropic Studies at Union Institute.