College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Liberal Arts Matters

Kristi Schultz Broughton Liberal Arts Essay Contest, 2011-2012

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences invites you to participate in our annual liberal education essay contest during the academic year 2011-2012. The contest is open to all Butler University undergraduate students, and the student who writes the winning essay will win a $1000 prize. Past essay contest winners are not permitted to enter the contest.  The winning essay will be posted on the Liberal Arts and Sciences website and its author will be honored at Honor Day on April 14, 2012.

The submitted essays will be judged by a committee of Butler University faculty drawn from various disciplines, and members of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Board of Visitors. 

The prompt for this year's essay is:

Mediating the Disconnect: Liberal Arts as Inspiration for Activism

Virtually all news and media outlets frequently and urgently remind us that we are at a historic crossroads and that local and global societies and economies are facing extraordinary if not totally unprecedented challenges. Yet many of us tend to feel disconnected from these challenges, watching them as if they were a show that we are free to observe or ignore or as a set of problems others are responsible for solving, preferably without our involvement.

In what ways has your experience at Butler moved you to and prepared you for a higher level of engagement with or response to these challenges? How has your liberal arts education encouraged or supported this change?

Contest Requirements:

Limit yourself to 1000 words and submit your essay as an attachment by January 31, 2011 to lasoffice@butler.edu.  The format of your paper should conform to the following standards:

  • Single spaced
  • One inch margins
  • Twelve point font
  • Conventional book-print fonts, such as Times, New Times Roman, Lucinda Bright, etc. No novelty fonts.
  • Title your attachment Lastname_FirstNameLAScontest.doc.
  • Make sure that your e-mail includes contact information (name, address, phone number, email address). Do not include your name or contact information within the file, as these essays will be blind-reviewed.

Your submission will almost certainly be richer if you avail yourself of the resources and commentaries posted at the Liberal Arts Matters web site. You are not expected necessarily to agree with these commentaries or to quote from them, but reading them will certainly help deepen and vary your thinking about the topic. Please note that by submitting an entry, you are giving us permission to post your essay on the Liberal Arts and Sciences web site.