HUSS Awards: To Hold or Not to Hold?

By: Nada AlNaggar

@NadaWahba10

The Humanities and Social Sciences (HUSS) Awards ceremony may be put on hold this year. Held every May,  the awards honor high achieving undergraduate and graduate students, and retiring faculty for their academic work and extracurricular activities

HUSS Dean Robert Switzer discussed in a meeting with his faculty on February 27 whether to hold the awards ceremony this year or cancel it due to the school-based ceremonies that will be held instead.

“We are not sure whether we are going to do this again this year or not. We definitely want to continue the tradition but I think the question that everyone is wondering about is what is going to happen with the school-based commencements?” said Switzer.

Part of the issue is that when the commencement became school-based, the workload was placed on the school’s staff.

Having both events would be an added pressure on the staff, he explained.

“We’re honoring a lot of people. Would there be time to do this? Would they let us do this in our commencement? If they don’t, then I think we’re going to continue to [hold the ceremony],” Switzer said.

Switzer explained that the HUSS Awards help build a sense of a school community but  also added that “this is what individual commencents are going to allow us to do too”.

Honoring HUSS students might be merged with the school-based commencement in the future, but the uncertainty for this year remains.

“We were talking about the new school -based graduation during the meeting and the dean asked whether we should still have our award ceremony in May and the consensus was to hold the ceremony, but this isn’t the final decision,” Chair of the Sociology, Egyptology, and Sociology Department Helen Rizzo said.

Rizzo said that hosting the annual HUSS Awards ceremony is yet to be confirmed.

However, HUSS students believe a decision needs to be made quickly since they eagerly wait for this ceremony every year.

Bahi Ashraf, Vice-President of the Psychology Association and a psychology junior, said he was disappointed that the HUSS Awards could be canceled.

He says it’s unfair to withdraw such recognition from students who have been working hard for their departments and respective majors.

“It was always [said] that the HUSS awards are there to recognize your hard work and achievement and to demonstrate the value that you offer to your department. It symbolizes every little value one puts into the university and I think those people deserve official recognition,” Ashraf said.

The HUSS Awards differ from the Honors ceremonies held by other schools because their main focus is not only on the student’s GPA. Some of the categories give equal importance to GPA and extracurricular activities and others are purely focused on either the GPA or the extracurricular activities carried out.

“This ceremony is trying to look at other things and gives recognition to students who are doing excellent work in all sort of ways in addition to academic excellence, which doesn’t really just mean high marks,” Switzer said.

Switzer explained that academic excellence isn’t just limited to the GPA. It can even include writing an outstanding paper or doing extra research.

“There are students who go beyond just achieving high grades, they think on their own and they think creatively. It’s the love of learning,” Switzer added.

The faculty and chairs of every department in the HUSS school choose nominees who they deem worthy of an award according to a list of four categories. This list is not restricted to students, as retired faculty and graduates who contributed heavily to the school can also be recognized.

They also select up to four senior undergraduate students with a minimum GPA of 3.7 and significant contribution to their respective departments, and up to 10 students who are heavily involved in extracurricular activities, with no minimum GPA requirement.

“Most of the awards in the university are about the GPA, but here, students can accelerate in one thing without being straight A students. You see a lot of artistic talents here and it’s not just about the GPA, it shouldn’t be,” Imane Abaza, assistant dean of school of humanities and social sciences, told The Caravan.

The HUSS Awards were once billed as an Honors Assembly just like all other schools, but they had to change that because the ceremony doesn’t revolve around students with high honors, Switzer said.

“It was called an honors assembly but people started to come forward and point out that we aren’t really awarding the students with high honors or students with high GPA in general and so that’s when we changed the name,” Switzer explained.