FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007
Contact: Dave Wellman, Director of Communications, (304) 696-7153
 

Two Marshall seniors win Political Science awards

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Two Marshall University seniors have been awarded the Claude J. Davis Award, given annually by the West Virginia Political Science Association for the best undergraduate paper written in a political science course.

Joshua Lynn, a Yeager Scholar with a double major in political science and history, and Paul Turner, an honors student majoring in philosophy, received the awards at the group’s annual convention last month at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Lynn and Turner, both undergraduates, won the award for papers written in a graduate-level research class taught by Marshall faculty member Dr. Jamie Warner, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Political Science. Warner said she invited Lynn and Turner to take the graduate course.

Students in the class studied the work of Jürgen Habermas, a German philosopher who gained fame as a sociologist for his work in the public sphere.  Habermas has taught and written extensively about social and political theory.

Warner assigned the students to study Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, as well as other literature supporting and critiquing Habermas’ claims.  The object of the study, she says, was to encourage students to think critically and gather “real world” data, and then write a conference-level paper on their findings. 

“I didn’t want them to do a strictly theoretical paper,” Warner says.  “The paper had to be anchored in Habermas and they had to use Habermas to analyze, describe or critique something in the ‘real world.’ ”

Lynn’s and Turner’s papers were so promising they presented their research at the Midwest Political Science Association’s annual meeting last spring.

“That’s quite a feat for undergraduate-level students,” Warner said.

Lynn plans to attend graduate school to work on his Ph.D. in history. Turner intends to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy.

For more information on the awards, contact Warner at (304) 696-2761.

 ###