History

Apr 29, 2021 - The history department honored several students and a history alumnus at its History Awards Program on the evening of April 29, 2021. Department faculty, spouses, and students convened at the tabled patio of the Bowld Student Commons, where Dr. Stephen Carls served as the moderator.

The first awards recognized students’ academic excellence in their coursework in history. The Phi Alpha Theta Scholarship Pin and Academic Excellence Certificate went to Addison Osborne, although she was unable to attend. The recipients of the History Major Award for exceptional work in the history major at Union were Rebekah Lisle and Savannah Wright.

The second set of recognitions was for winners in the 2021 Dr. James Alex Baggett History Research Paper Competition. Jackson Waters received the second place prize for his paper “The Decline and Fall of the Virginian Church.” There were two third place winners, namely, Anne Adams who wrote on “A Young Queen of Character and Faith: Wilhelmina of the Netherlands’ Role in Unifying the Netherlands in the Early 20th Century,” and Addison Osborne who authored “Black Gold: Eastern Kentucky’s Resource Curse.” Honorable mention certificates were given to Tad Binkley for his paper titled “The Sacrifice: Stephen Mather and the National Park Service Organic Act” and Savannah Wright whose study dealt with “The Sound of Music: The Development of Hollywood Film Music and American Culture.”

Next among the award recipients were the three students who presented papers on March 13 at the Phi Alpha Theta Super-Regional Virtual Conference at the University of Arkansas – Fayetteville. The department presented history books and certificates of commendation to Sandra Allen, Jackson Waters, and Savannah Wright.

Carls then presented gift awards to graduating history majors and Phi Alpha Theta members, including Rebekah Lisle (history and Phi Alpha Theta), Noah Ross (history), and Savannah Wright (history and Phi Alpha Theta). Matthew Latham, another graduating history major and Phi Alpha Theta member, was unable to attend the event.

Club officers in 2020-2021 received certificates of appreciation for their work. They were President Davina Norris of the Rutledge Honorary History Club and President Savannah Wright and Vice President Sandra Allen of Union’s Delta-Psi chapter of Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society.

The final presentation of the evening was the Thirteenth Annual History Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award which went to Dr. Keith Bates. After graduating magna cum laude from Union in 1996, Bates earned a master’s degree in theology in 1999 with the distinction summa cum laude from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Bates continued his studies at Kansas State University where he earned a Ph.D. in American history in 2006. While there, he earned the school’s A. Bowser Sageser Memorial Graduate Teaching Award and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Bates joined Union’s history department as a full-time faculty member in 2004, where he has faithfully served ever since. The university recognized his teaching talents in 2011 by honoring him with its Faculty Member of the Year Award. In the area of scholarship, Bates was the coeditor and author of a chapter for the book Civil Religion and American Christianity (2015), and in March 2021 the University of Tennessee Press published his book Mainstreaming Fundamentalism: John R. Rice and Fundamentalism’s Public Emergence. Bates is currently Professor of History at Union.

For snacks, homemade chocolate chip cookies, Madeleine tea cakes, almond biscotti, and chocolate bars were served in individual plastic bags along with bottled water. Twenty-one people attended the event.