Michael P. Montgomery Wins First Place in the Norma J. Lang Prize for Undergraduate Information Research

Michael P. Montgomery, a fourth-year marine and coastal science major (oceans and the Earth system emphasis) minoring in professional writing and history, received first place in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences category of this year’s Norma J. Lang Prize. The prize, named after and funded by the late UC Davis Professor Emerita of Botany, Norma J. Lang, is for undergraduate students whose research projects make extensive use of library resources and advance their understanding of the academic research process. 

Michael won the Lang Prize for his essay, “Gary Snyder’s Pleistocene Environmentalism.” He describes his project as a “history paper that looks at the Ice Age and looks at the work of [Pulitzer Prize-winning poet] Gary Snyder in an Ice Age context.” This essay, which he wrote for Dr. Melissa Bender’s course, Writing in the Disciplines: History (UWP 102C), is a subset of his undergraduate honors thesis.

“Their classes and their advice have been an opportunity for me to pursue these ideas in a really great academic venue,” Michael says about University Writing Program (UWP) instructors Melissa Bender, Scott Herring, and Katie Rodger. He thanks Dr. Bender for giving him approval to stretch the boundaries of her class assignment and do archival research. He cites Dr. Herring, his undergraduate thesis advisor, as someone he can bounce ideas off of, explaining, “I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did without the [professional] writing minor and the professors and the classes because they’ve really been a great opportunity to explore my academic interests, so I’m very grateful for that.”

Michael doesn’t just work for his classes; he makes his classes work for him. Michael described himself as being “under the gun” to write his undergraduate thesis in conjunction with taking an upper division writing class, so he made his research and writing for UWP 102C work for the thesis as well. He also wove knowledge and ideas from his past courses into this project. His interest in Gary Snyder burgeoned in Dr. Rodger’s Science Journalism (UWP 111C) course when he reached out to Snyder about doing an interview profile on the place of science in poetry. Two years afterward, Michael found a specific [scientific] subject of Snyder’s writing to focus on: “I’ve learned about the Ice Age in some of my classes for the major. That’s been a little theme throughout my undergraduate education. So I’ve honed in now… it’s science of the Ice Age and [Gary Snyder’s] poetry.” In his essay for the Lang Prize, Michael also incorporated some of what he’d learned in his writing about the extinction of the wooly mammoths in Dr. Herring’s Writing in the Disciplines: Biology (UWP 102B) course.

Michael’s essay has also been accepted into the yearly anthology Prized Writing, which features  UC Davis undergraduates’ exemplary writing from across the disciplines. This anthology is another aspect of the UWP that has been important to him, and he encourages everyone to submit their work to Prized Writing.

“I’ve really expanded my options for graduate school. Some of the subjects I’ve written about in these [professional writing] classes have really helped me define who I am,” Michael says. “I would encourage other students to use the classes and the internships to explore what they’re interested in. It’s a great opportunity. And the more you write about something, the more you figure it out. That maybe sounds kind of cliché, but it’s been an important side of my college career.”

~ By Oliver Tseng, Writing and Editing Intern, Professional Writing Program

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