Emerging Scholar Award
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Honors intellectual curiosity, early inquiry, and promise for future scholarly or professional impact.
What the Award Recognizes
The CALS Emerging Scholar Award recognizes a student who demonstrates exceptional intellectual curiosity, a strong desire to learn, and meaningful early engagement in scholarly, applied, or inquiry-based work. This award celebrates students who are beginning to explore their academic or professional field in deeper ways and show clear potential for future contribution.
Students in any CALS major or program, including the Agricultural Technology Program, are eligible and encouraged to be nominated.
Who the Award Is Designed For
Students who:
- Appreciate learning for its own sake and pursue knowledge beyond required coursework
- Engage in early-stage research, inquiry, applied projects, technical investigations, or academic enrichment
- Take initiative to ask thoughtful questions, explore ideas, or try new forms of scholarly or applied work.
- Show a promising trajectory toward future academic, technical, or professional impact even if still early in experience
What Makes a Strong Nominee
A strong nominee will have:
- Clear evidence of intellectual curiosity, seeking out learning opportunities, asking insightful questions, or exploring ideas independently
- Demonstrated engagement in inquiry, whether through research, applied learning, technical projects, creative problem-solving, or community-engaged scholarship
- A visible growth trajectory that indicates promise for future contribution in their field, profession, or community
- A developing but distinctive scholarly voice or set of interests, even if their academic record is not yet fully established.
Key Clarification:
This award does not recognize high GPA alone. Academic excellence may support a nomination, but the emphasis is on curiosity, inquiry, initiative, and future potential.
Who Can Nominate
Faculty members, research mentors, advisors, graduate assistants, or experiential learning supervisors.