Judith Polgar Ruchkin Prize
Ava Shafiei '19, winner of the 2019 Ruchkin Prize, with Assistant Professor Emily Paddon Rhoads and Jack Pokorny '19 at graduation.
The Ruchkin Prize is an award for a paper on politics or public policy written during the junior or senior year. The paper may be for a course, a seminar, or an independent project, including a thesis. The paper is nominated by a faculty member and judged by a committee of the Political Science Department to be of outstanding merit based on originality, power of analysis and written exposition, and depth of understanding of goals as well as technique.
Past Ruchkin Winners
2023- Emma Klein '23
2022- Katie Reeves '22 and Sophia Peterson '23 (Political Sociology)
2021- William Bein '21
2020 – Nirav Mehta ’20 and Qi Xu ‘20
2019 – Ava Shafiei ‘19
2017 – Geraldo Santos ‘17
2016 – Daniel Block ’16
2015 – Katy Montoya ‘15
2014 – Carmen Smith-Estrada ‘14
2013 – Hannah Lehmann ‘13
2012 – Amelia Field ‘12
2011 – Candice Nguyen ’11 and Samuel Sellers ‘11
2009 - Marissa Schaffer '09
2008- Rita Kamani '08
2007- Sybille Ngo-Nyeck '07
2005- Emiliano Rodriguez '05
2004- Joseph A. Florence '04
2003- Gabriel Hetland '03; Benjamin Wiles '03; Jeremy Schifeling '03
