Cannon Award presented for only second time
HELEN B. CANNON AWARD PRESENTED FOR SECOND TIME AT UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
LOGAN – The Helen B. Cannon Award was presented for the second time at Utah State University and this year’s recipient is Matt Wright.
The Cannon Award, coordinated by the Honors Program at Utah State, honors a student with an outstanding honors career and who has submitted a notable thesis proposal. This year’s applicants are required to complete a senior thesis and graduate with honors in December 2005 or spring 2006.
The Cannon award’s namesake first came to Utah State as a graduate instructor in 1987. In 1990 she became a temporary lecturer and remained with the department of English for 13 years. She incorporated the “New Yorker” magazine into her writing courses and was honored by the magazine for doing so.
The Helen B. Cannon Award is a tribute to a professor who, in the words of her son-in-law, Nate Alder, “loved students, treated them as equal partners, gave them all [she] had – physically, mentally, emotionally – and inspired them in untold ways.”
According to David Lancy, director of Utah State’s Honors Program, the Helen B. Cannon Award was created to encourage and support the most promising honors student who is in his or her junior year. The award supports the completion of the student’s honors thesis.
As the second annual recipient of the Cannon Award, Wright received a cash award of $1,000. He and four students who received honorable mention awards were honored at a luncheon with the Cannon family, including Helen, her husband, Larry, and daughter and son-in-law Laurel and Nathan Alder.
Students receiving honorable mention awards include Guy Schauerhamer, mechanical and aerospace engineering; Brooke Christensen, elementary education; Lisa Ferrara, English; and Tyce Kearl, biology. Each received a $200 award.
Wright, this year’s award recipient, carries a double major in English and economics with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. He will graduate with Honors in English and university studies in spring 2006. He has written for the student newspaper, “The Utah Statesman,” and now works at Bear River Mental Health. He has been accepted into the Rhetoric Associate program next year.
The cash award will assist Wright as he completes his honors thesis. His thesis will examine how Tolkien’s major works, “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” are translated and adapted into contemporary Chinese and Taiwanese literature, he said.
“I will look at how that adapted literature, in turn, influences the popular-culture climate of those countries, and what a global pop culture means in the context of modernity,” he said.
Following graduation, Wright plans to attend law school, focusing on international law.
For more information on the Helen B. Cannon Award, contact the Honors Program at (435) 797-2715.