Three grads win awards for essays in program sponsored by the Outlook

Sarah Glady, also a Whitworth graduate, and Virginia Evans, a graduating senior at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., tied for second place in the award contest. The competition was based on college seniors’ essays on the topic, “How my education at a PC(USA)-related college has shaped my faith and prepared me for significant service and leadership.”

Winning essays were picked by a panel of Presbyterian leaders. Wallace was awarded $1,000 by the Presbyterian Outlook Foundation, and Glady and Evans received $200 each.

Wallace’s studies will intensify this fall when she enrolls in a five-year philosophy Ph.D. program at Duke University. “I hope to become a philosophy professor at a school like Whitworth,” she told the Outlook.

Glady will enter a Master of Arts program in literature at Arizona State University in Tempe. She plans to earn a Ph.D. as well.

This summer, Evans is serving two internships in the communications departments of ChildFund and Children, Inc. She hopes for a career in communications, public relations or marketing at a nonprofit organization aiding children in developing countries and the U.S.

“I think these internships will be great experiences,” she said.

The magazine staff and trustees organized the annual award program in 2007 to help strengthen ties between local churches and the more than 60 PC(USA)-related colleges. It also aims to help graduating seniors cap their college education by inviting them to consider how it has helped them integrate the academic with the spiritual and the personal with the communal.

“We also are only too happy to showcase before the whole church the giftedness, the achievement and intellectual force of those emerging from our schools,” said Outlook Editor Jack Haberer. “These rising leaders point to a promising future for Presbyterianism.”

The three winning essays will be published this fall in the 2012 Outlook Guide to PC(USA)-Related Colleges and Universities.