2024 WAC Composition Awards
The Lamar University Writing Center is proud to host the second annual First-Year WAC Composition Awards! Open to first-year student nominees who are writing across the curriculum, The 2024 Compy Awards will present six winners with a $50 prize in the following categories:
- best rhetorical analysis
- best literary analysis
- best humanities essay (including social sciences)
- best STEAM essay (can include technical essays, though not reports)
- best speechwriting
- most improved first-year writer (to be demonstrated in a 500-700-word written reflection by the nominee on their writing journey and a letter from the nominating faculty member)
Details and some rules below.
Contest Rules
Student nominees may come from a 1000 or 2000 level class but must be in either their first or second semester of college. Transfer students are not eligible unless they fit this criterion.
Ideally, submissions will be of work written in Fall 2024, but papers from any 2024 semester are eligible.
Each faculty member may nominate one student per class; i.e., if you teach more than one writing intensive course, you may enter a student from each.
Each faculty member may submit only one nomination for "most improved first-year writer."
For all categories except speechwriting, the expected length is (in the neighborhood of) 5-7 pages, or whatever is typical for a rigorous writing assignment in your course. Winning essays will preferably have an interdisciplinary quality inherent in most good academic writing.
We will accept nominations through December 3, announce winners around the end of term/mid-December, and distribute awards early in Spring 2024. Help us celebrate your teaching and the work of your students by nominating your stars this fall for a Compy Award! Contact for questions: casey.ford@lamar.edu