History Gives over $540,000 in Scholarships and Prizes | Department of History

Submitted by Nick Grall on May 18, 2026 - 2:24 pm

Winners of the 2026 History Awards and Prizes

Each May, faculty, staff, alumni, family, and friends come together to celebrate the academic and service achievements of UW History students at the annual History Awards. This year, we are thrilled to have awarded over $540,000 in scholarships and prizes seventy undergraduates and four graduate students, as well as one outstanding Washington high school history teacher. This would not be possible without the generous support of our alumni and friends—thank you!

Research Prizes

John and Linda Ravage Prize

This prize is given in recognition of an outstanding paper or project by an undergraduate on the history of African Americans, with a preference for African Americans in the American West. This year’s winner is Jaylen Meyer for his essay “The Right to Stay Put: Class Conflict and Working-Class Resistance to Top-Down Integration in Seattle.” In it, Meyer examines school segregation in Seattle in the 1960s. Rather than focusing on the administrative battles to integrate Seattle’s schools, he looks at the divisions within Seattle’s Black community that this issue created. Jaylen’s lucid analysis and careful attention to the fractures and debates within the Black community paint a more nuanced picture of this important period in Seattle’s history.

Honorable mention was presented to Matea Houle for her essay “There’s a Riot Goin’ On: The Foundational History of Black Activism in 1970s San Francisco-Bay Area Politics” which dives into how the Black Power movement of the mid-20th century served as a model for organizations such as the Asian American Political Alliance, Native American activism, ethnic studies movements, and even some strands of gay liberation and disability activism.

Thomas M. Power Prizes for Excellence in History

Established in memory of UW alumnus Thomas M. Power, the Excellence in History awards recognize exemplary scholarship in history and encourage study in the discipline. This award acknowledges undergraduates and graduates who have produced outstanding research papers within a UW history course.

Undergraduate

Grant Deines “Mass Mobilization in the Toxic Archipelago” (first place)
Grant’s paper explores the citizen led movements that arose in response to industrial pollution in post-war Japan. Grant argues that the Japanese were reluctant environmental activists, but that the appearance of four horrific pollution related diseases forced some Japanese to seek redress from both industry and government. As Grant demonstrates, the pollution that caused these diseases was not just due to one or two bad actors, it was the result of government endorsed economic reconstruction in the wake of WWII. As a result, the activists found themselves at odds with industry, with their own government, and sometimes with their own neighbors who did not want to risk damaging their country’s economic growth and viewed the victims of these diseases as hypochondriacs. Grant’s impressively researched examination of these citizen movements demonstrates that, although they won some victories, they faced a losing battle as Japanese industry, government, academia, and even many ordinary citizens viewed the casualties caused by environmental pollution as an acceptable price to pay for sustained economic growth.

Rowan Herron “And Teach the Midwife Never the Later” (honorable mention)
Rowan’s paper uses three 14th-century English pastoral manuals to explore the evolution of the practice of emergency baptism. Rowan weaves together scholarship from several fields (including the history of gender, medicine, and religion) to explain how the Church’s growing concern over infants dying without baptism led it to empower laypeople to perform emergency baptisms in the absence of a priest. Rowan demonstrates that manuals written for and by priests began singling out midwives for instruction in emergency baptism, and assuming that the clergy should assert more authority over midwives as a result. Rowan’s exploration of this understudied topic sheds new light on how and why the male clergy delegated limited sacramental power to a specific group of women and then used that delegation of priestly authority to subject midwives to greater clerical control.

Graduate

Dylan Plung, “A Cartography of Wartime Record Destruction in Postwar Japan” (first prize)
Millions of potentially incriminating documents vanished across Japan’s empire in the window between Emperor Hirohito’s surrender and the arrival of Allied occupation forces. As Dylan Plung writes in this exceptional essay, individual acts of destruction across Japan’s empire transformed what could be known about World War II. Using a swath of Japanese and English-language primary sources, Dylan explores the individual decisions to destroy wartime records and shows that the choice to obey or disobey burn orders were partial, selective, and uneven. While Japan’s incomplete reckoning with its wartime history is often attributed to the empire’s swift collapse and Allied occupation, Plung argues that the elimination of evidence heightened misrepresentations of wartime responsibility and fostered a “victim consciousness” that continues to stoke political tension in East Asia.

Aliya Siva, “Messbaris as Microcosm of Middle Classness: Colonial Construction and Postcolonial Continuities” (honorable mention)
This exceptional paper provides a Samoan perspective of Fa’a Samoa (ways of knowing and living followed by Samoans), to critically examine histories that have been written for Samoans that often misconstrue the image of Samoans and prioritize colonial perceptions of Christianity in the islands. Aliyah deployed a range of primary sources from the nineteenth century to ground her analysis.

Burke Prize

Named after Pacific Northwest historian and former faculty of the University of Washington Department of History, Robert Burke, this prize is given to the graduate student deemed to have amassed the most meritorious record during the year they complete their MA in U.S. history.

Aliyah Siva completed the MA degree in Autumn Quarter 2025 under the supervision of Professor Josh Reid. Aliyah is a scholar in the field of Indigenous Pacific History. Her MA seminar paper, “Revitalizing Samoan Voices in the Archive: Navigating Missionary Arrivals the Samoan Way,” examines Samoan history during their first encounters with members of the London Missionary Society in the period of the 1830s to the 1850s. After completing the MA degree, Aliyah was promoted to the History PhD program. She intends to continue to pursue her studies and research into the impact of colonization on Samoan history and culture.

Service Awards

Thomas M. Power Award for Excellence - Outstanding Graduating Senior

Rowan Herron is a truly exceptional student. Rowan was nominated for this award by several faculty, one noted that Rowan “distinguished themself not only through consistently excellent academic work, but also through their thoughtful and generous presence in the classroom. Rowan is hardworking, well prepared, and actively engaged in class discussions, while also showing real care and respect for fellow students by listening attentively and helping to create a welcoming and intellectually lively classroom environment.” One of our instructors for the honors in history cohort shared similar thoughts, “Rowan is an outstanding interlocutor, intellectually curious, a generous cohort-mate to their fellow thesis writers, and cares about the craft of writing history.”

Thomas M. Power Award for Excellence - Outstanding Student Leader

This award recognizes the student who has demonstrated outstanding work at integrating the study of history with community and public engagement.

Alec Benson has been an outstanding presence here in the Department of History in his leadership for Phi Alpha Theta, our honors in history society, and as a leader in the classroom. As one faculty member noted, “Alec is an excellent student who has done a stellar job as President of Phi Alpha Theta this year. Alec has helped to revive membership, plan multiple events that brought our undergraduates together and fostered a sense of community. He organized a very successful book sale. He's been extremely invested in the club and his dedication really shows.” Another faculty member also noted Alex’s contribution to the history classroom here at UW, and in the future. “Alec has been an outstanding participant and contributor in all of my classes, displaying the academic strength, collegiality, leadership, and adaptability that will serve him well in graduate school and as a classroom teacher. Of the approximately 150-200 students I have taught per year in the last several years at the UW, Alec has been in the top 5% of contributors and performers."

Thomas M. Power Award for Excellence - Outstanding Teaching Assistant

Kelly Van Acker is a third-year PhD student with a specialization in the Filipino history across the Spanish and US colonial regimes. A former Spanish and French teacher at Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School, Kelly has worked at the UW as a grader, teaching assistant, and predoctoral instructor.
Kelly’s teaching supervisors describe her as “an outstanding TA,” remarked that she did “an amazing job”, and was “one of the best I’ve worked with in my teaching career. She is punctual, conscientious, and follows through on tasks in a timely manner. She is approachable and always accessible to students.” Her faculty supervisors praised her commitment to her teaching in the face of quite difficult extenuating circumstances. “Kelly worked through these challenges,” one faculty supervisor wrote, “and her performance as a TA was exceptional.”

Sierra Mondragon is a fourth-year PhD student who specializes in Indigenous and US history, with particular focus on Indigenous women’s historical narratives, women of color feminisms, and processes of race and gender. She has TA’d for a range of U.S. History courses covering witchcraft in colonial New England, the history of the American Presidency, and class, labor, and U.S. capitalism.

Sierra’s teaching supervisors praise creative lesson plans, procedures for encouraging widespread participation in a large group, accurate grading, and thoughtful comments on exams. “Sierra was excellent,” one professor noted. “I can’t remember anyone better in the 20 or more years that I have taught this course. . . . I was impressed by her gentle but commanding presence, her careful but articulate explanations of complex issues, and her ability to ask meaningful questions that guided students through the important issues in each week’s readings. Students liked her and responded eagerly.” Not to be outdone, another faculty member that supervised Sierra lauded her communication skills, grading efficiency and efficacy, and ability to draw quieter students into classroom discussions. “Sierra really is a natural,” they wrote, “has an immense amount of empathy for her students, cultivating good lines of communication but also maintaining mutual respect between student and instructor. She has an intuitive sense of how to manage a classroom, and she clearly delights in it.”

Excellence in Teaching Award

Thomas and Cameron Pressly Prize for Excellence in Secondary Education

Named for late UW History emeritus professor Thomas Pressly and his wife Cameron, this prize recognizes remarkable teaching of history and social studies at the high school level in the state of Washington. Nominations are made each year from undergraduate and graduate students through short essays in support of the outstanding teacher who contributed to their study of history. This year, it gives us great pleasure to recognize Jonas Fridriksson of Battle Ground High School in Battle Ground, Washington.

Mr. Fridriksson received his BA from Western Washington University and his Master’s in Teaching from Portland State University. He has been teaching history at Battle Ground High School since 1994 and has built a reputation as a caring and engaging teacher over the past 32 years. As his principal Heather Ichimura put it, Mr. Fridriksson is a kid magnet. She notes that he is “the National Honors Society advisor, coaches football, and is loved by all for his encouraging nature, humor, and the relationships he builds. He loves his job and the kids he supports, and you can feel that the second you enter his room.”

Mr. Fridriksson was nominated by an undergraduate student in a high school history class, who wrote that he had made a lasting impact on her. In her nomination, she says “he always demonstrated care and compassion for his students: he always created the space to ask questions and get help if you were struggling... He made learning about learning-- not about getting perfect grades or memorizing a data set. Because we had the opportunity to fail, because we could reach out to him, and because he made his classes a consistently fun environment, he showed his students that history doesn't always mean textbooks and dust, but that it was really about active conversations and learning from the past to inform our present.”

It’s clear that Mr. Fridriksson is an inspiring presence in the classroom who brings enormous passion to his teaching. When I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Fridriksson what he loves most about teaching, he told me “Many students come into my class believing that history will have very little influence on their lives and that it is the study of old people doing old things. I love bringing energy and excitement to this discipline and showing my students that history is filled with personal stories of triumph, hardship, and resilience. It is incredibly rewarding to witness the spark that is created when students begin to understand and appreciate the need for historical understanding on their path into adulthood.”

Scholarships

Burke-Erickson Fund for Foreign Language Study

This award was established to support students in the study of foreign languages and cultures of the Middle East.

Kaiyue Xue

James Bicknell Fund for Academic Travel

Established by Professor Emeritus Daniel C. Waugh in memory of his maternal great-grandfather, this fund provides travel aid for students studying the languages and cultures of Russia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Near and Middle East, and North Africa.

Ayden Erickson for archaeological study at the Balkan Heritage Foundation in North Macedonia
Alexis Lewis for classes related to the Middle East in Rome
Abdi Omar for study in Morocco
Samuel Yi for study in Slovenia

Dale Roger Corkery Scholarship

Established in memory of UW alum Dale Roger Corkery, this fund honors his love of history by offering support to undergraduate history majors studying ancient history.

Yumeji Tomeoka

Dennison-Kernaghan Scholarship

Established in recognition of a friendship spanning over twenty years, it is the hope of this donor that the support provided by this fund will help students as they gain rich experiences through their education.

Sebastian Hoffman

Freedman Remak Family Scholarship in History

Nancy (Freedman) and Ben Remak began this scholarship to assist history majors who face the high cost of non-resident tuition. Nancy herself had come to the UW from out of state and recognizes the financial burden such students face.

Matea Houle

UW Department of History Scholarship

This scholarship is made possible through generous contributions made by our alumni and friends.

Samuel Yi

Meder-Montgomery Family Student Support Fund in History

UW History alumna Marilyn Montgomery began this award to support undergraduate history majors in their studies.

Alexis Lewis

Jonathan and Elizabeth Roberts Scholarship

This scholarship is given to incoming first-year students with a demonstrated interest in history.

Maxime Girou

Maurice D. and Lois M. Schwartz Scholarship

This scholarship fund was created in 1977 through the generosity of Maurice and Lois Schwartz to support the study of non-Western history at the University of Washington. The Schwartz Fund has been a vital source of tuition support for students of the department for many decades, and now thanks to a final bequest from their trust, the impact of their generosity is even stronger. This year, we are able to award the equivalent of sixty-three quarters of resident tuition to sixty students, just shy of $300,000.

Wesley Andrus
Maggie Aydelott
Sadi Bayazit
Anna Berner
Hanaa Boualamallah
Olay Ceesay
Kyle Clark
Wyatt Clarke
Grant Deines
Sarah Dittle
Amelia Duncan
Rui Dunlop
Sophie Dzyban
Ayden Erickson
Samir Ernst
A.P.D.G. Everett
Maxime Girou
Lainey Graham
Avery Greenwood
Avery Hallum
Qiulin Han
Skylar Harris
Logan Henry
Sebastian Hoffman
Matea Houle
Josie Huang
Diego Irias
Allison Jones
Aiden Knudsen
Nicolas Krupa
Madison Kuper
Sam Kurtz
Marcus Lam
Lou Thi Le
Alexis Lewis
Yueran Liu
Annabelle Loge
Kayla McGhee-Phillips
Jaylen Meyer
Leslie Munford
Elliot Myers
Marshall Park
Davis Phinney
Madelyn Price
Devan Regan
Ava Robinson
Laurel Rovetta
Jack Ruffner
Sydney Sabourin
Manuel Sevilla
Amber Shi
Jackson Sutton
Adah Svetlik
Ashutosh Thapa
Aaron Tolberd
Nikita Tselikov
Sophie Winders
Kaiyue Xue
Yuval Yedidsion
Samuel Yi

Larry Lee Sleizer Scholarship

Herman and Rose Sleizer endowed this scholarship in memory of their son, Larry Lee Sleizer, with the hope that supporting many future generations of students would serve as a fitting memorial to his name.

Wesley Andrus
Wyatt Clarke
Brooklyn Cunningham
Willa Hoey
Sebastian Hoffman
Matea Houle
Nicolas Krupa
Lou Thi Le
Yueran Liu
Addy Miller
Elliot Myers
Bella Navarro
Marshall Park
Ava Robinson
Laurel Rovetta
Jackson Sutton
Jaz Wacker
Sophie Winders
Kaiyue Xue
Yuval Yididsion
Samuel Yi

Faye Wilson Scholarship

This scholarship is made possible through the generosity of Faye Wilson, who directed that a portion of her estate be used by the UW Department of History to assist outstanding undergraduates with tuition costs.