Biology major gets Honors scholarship

Benson H. Morrill, a biology major at Utah State University, is the first recipient of the Helen B. Cannon Award.

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 were required to complete a senior thesis and graduate with honors in December 2004 or spring 2005.

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 recipient of the Cannon Award, Morrill received a cash award of $1,000. He was also honored at a luncheon with the Cannon family.

Five additional honors students received honorable mention awards of $200, including Stephanie J. Chambers (biology), Genie Hanson (accounting and marketing), Christine Merrill (history), Ben Minson (professional and technical writing) and Johnathan Nelson (psychology).

Although passionately interested as a youth in amphibians and reptiles, especially snakes, Morrill entered Utah State as a food science major. When he returned from a church mission, passion won and he changed his major to biology. His current research includes study of the marine toad (Bufo marinus), and he will spend the summer in Arizona working to determine the genetic variation among the toad’s populations north and south of the Trans-Mexican Neovolcanic Belt. Following his graduation in December 2004, Morrill will go on to graduate school where he will continue to study herpetology.

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.”

For information on the Helen B. Cannon Award, contact the Honors Program at (435) 797-2715.