Marshall University Alumni Association

The 34^th Annual Maier Awards Ceremony
by Dr. Chris Green, Department of English

On April 26 more than a hundred people from around the state gathered with Ed Maier, President Kopp, and faculty from English and Classics at the Marshall Student Center Alumni Lounge for the 34th annual Maier Awards ceremony. Maier, president of the Maier Foundation, gave awards to Marshall and West Virginia high school students to honor excellence in creative and scholarly writing and the translation of Latin. Faculty and students look forward to the Maier Awards as a highlight of the academic year.

The William J. Maier Writing Awards
These awards, which honor excellence in writing and range from $200 to $375, are presented to students enrolled in English classes at Marshall University. At this year’s awards, Ed Maier saw fit to also provide copies of his father’s autobiography, The Education of a Philanthropist, to winners of the Freshman writing awards.

The William J. Maier Writing Awards were established in 1973 by Mr. William J. Maier Jr. after he read an article in the National Review written by Marshall’s Dr. John Teel about freshman composition classes.

Students’ papers are submitted throughout the year in freshman composition, upper class and graduate expository writing, fiction, and poetry. In the spring semester, the winning papers are selected from a field of submissions by groups of faculty members.

Text Box: Charlene Pierce, First Place Freshman Non-Research Essay Prizes have always fostered competition and excellence. The competition and camaraderie that the awards generate honors the skills of writing, a necessary and basic education task, allowing students and the general public to appreciate this educational core.

The Maier Latin Cup Awards Competition

For the past 27 years, the Maier Foundation has graciously funded the Maier Latin Cup Awards Competition, which is administered by the Department of Classics at Marshall University.

These awards celebrate the best high school Latin students in the state of West Virginia, recognize the effective teaching being carried out by high school Latin teachers in the state in a difficult academic subject, and emphasize the importance of Latin and Roman Studies in secondary education.

As far as can be ascertained, this contest is unique among Classics departments across the country.

The Maier Latin Cup Awards were established by William J. Maier, Jr. in 1979 to repay in some way the special attention his high school Latin teacher at Huntington High School showed him, for it was this extra devotion to Latin and Latin students on the part of his teacher which helped him secure a scholarship to Harvard University.

Each high school which offers Latin in the state, public as well as private, is encouraged to select two students currently enrolled in Second Year Latin to take the College Board Latin Achievement Examination in December each year. Upon the basis of scores earned on this test, a prize of $500 is presented to the first place winner, $250 to the second place winner, and $150 to the third place winner. The first place winner receives the additional honor of having his/her name engraved on the Marshall University Latin Cup which is displayed the following academic year at the winner’s high school.

The Maier Latin Sight-Translation Contest

Created in 1992, the Maier Latin Sight-Translation Contest is held in conjunction with the West Virginia Junior Classical League Convention. Students from each of the four levels of Latin secondary instruction compete by translating at sight passages of Latin appropriate to their levels of instruction.

Each junior high and high school represented at this convention may select one student to compete at each level. A first prize of $200 and a second prize of $100 are awarded in the Latin I and II levels. A first prize of $200 is awarded in the Latin III and IV levels.

The goals of the Maier Latin Sight-Translation Contest include increasing the attendance at the West Virginia Junior Classical League Convention by enhancing the academic part of the Convention, emphasizing the importance of sight translation and increasing the number of students taking Latin.

The Maier Latin Scholarship (2006 Award to John Skeans)

The Department of Classics at Marshall University sponsors the Maier Latin Scholarship, generously underwritten by the Maier Foundation. This two-thousand-dollar scholarship is intended to support the work of a student presently pursuing a Latin major and enrolled in advanced Latin classes.