. . . about the Hoopes Prize

Nominating a Project
1. Who is eligible to nominate a student project for a Hoopes Prize?
2. May anyone besides the direct supervisor of a project nominate it for a Hoopes Prize?
3. Can an instructor who directly supervised a student project to completion but who is not or is no longer affiliated with Harvard nominate the project?
4. What happens if a project has more than one supervisor?
5. How does an instructor nominate a student project?
6. May an instructor who supervised two superb student projects nominate both works?
7. May an instructor nominate a group project for the Hoopes Prize?
8. May students ask their instructors to nominate their projects for a Hoopes Prize?

Eligibility for Nomination
9. Does a project need to be a senior thesis in order to be eligible for the Hoopes Prize?
10. Can creative writing entries such as a novel or a collection of poetry or short stories be nominated?
11. If a student project is not a written piece (for example, it is a film, performance, or gallery show), can it still be nominated?
12. Are the projects of November and March graduates eligible for the Hoopes Prize?
13. If a department’s thesis deadline for its students falls after the Hoopes faculty nomination deadline, can deserving projects still be nominated for the prize?
14. Does the Hoopes Prize Committee take other factors into account if a student’s project was not an outstanding success but the student has many strengths?
15. What role do summa ratings play in the Hoopes Prize?

Student Application Forms
16. How does a nominee complete the student portion of the application?
17. What is the project abstract and why is it needed?
18. May students revise their projects in response to readers’ comments or other evaluations before submitting them for the Hoopes Prize?
19. What is the required format for written work being submitted for the Hoopes Prize?
20. May students submit their applications before their instructors have submitted their nominations?
21. May nominees make changes to their applications once they have been submitted?

Readers’ Comments
22. What are readers’ comments?
23. How does the Prize Office get the readers’ comments?
24. What happens if the readers’ comments will not be available until after the Hoopes deadlines?
25. If a student’s department does not produce readers’ comments, is the student’s project at a disadvantage?

Deadlines
26. Are the Hoopes Prize deadlines dependent on the location of the people submitting materials for the prize?
27. Why are there two different deadlines?
28. How far in advance should instructors and students begin working on their Hoopes Prize applications?
29. What should instructors and students do if they encounter difficulties with the application?

Winning the Hoopes Prize
30. When will the Hoopes Prize winners be announced?
31. What should student winners do if they would like to add an acknowledgments page to their winning projects?
32. What happens to winning projects?
33. Why do the nominators of winning projects, in addition to the nominees, receive prizes?
34. May instructors have their Hoopes payments deposited into their research accounts?
35. Can the Prize Office pay out all or part of a prize winner’s award money to someone else?

Nominating a Project

1. Who is eligible to nominate a student project for a Hoopes Prize?
Any instructor who has directly supervised to completion an extraordinary undergraduate work submitted for credit in Harvard College during the current academic year may nominate that project. For the purposes of the Hoopes Prize, “instructor” refers to any member of the teaching faculty, including non-ladder faculty, graduate students who instruct undergraduate work, and visiting faculty.

2. May anyone besides the direct supervisor of a project nominate it for a Hoopes Prize?
Nominations are made solely at the discretion of the instructors who directly supervised the projects. No one—including departmental readers, DUSs, students’ past instructors or advisors, and administrators—may nominate a project that they did not directly supervise to completion.

3. Can an instructor who directly supervised a student project to completion but who is not or is no longer affiliated with Harvard nominate the project?
Yes. Instructors who are not or no longer affiliated with Harvard but who directly supervised a student project to completion that they wish to nominate for a Hoopes Prize should contact the Prize Office at prizes at fas.harvard.edu as soon as possible.

4. What happens if a project has more than one supervisor?
A supervisor is an instructor who has directly supervised to completion an extraordinary undergraduate work submitted for credit in Harvard College during the current academic year. If a project has two supervisors, the supervisors should decide whether one of them will nominate the project or if the two of them will co-nominate the project. No more than two supervisors may nominate a project.

If the supervisors decide to co-nominate the project, both nominators must submit an online Faculty Nomination Form. They must also either write individual project evaluations or co-author a project evaluation. If a winning entry has co-nominators, the nominator prize will be divided equally between the two of them.

If only one Faculty Nomination Form is submitted by the prize deadline, the nomination will be processed as a single nomination, and only the nominator who submitted the form will be awarded the nominator prize. A co-nominator cannot be added to a project after the prize deadline.

5. How does an instructor nominate a student project?
An instructor who has decided to nominate a student project should follow the instructions found on the Instructions for Faculty Nominators page on the Prize Office’s website.

6. May an instructor who supervised two superb student projects nominate both works?
An instructor ordinarily nominates just one student project in a given academic year. In the event that an instructor has supervised more than one outstanding project and thinks two are deserving of a Hoopes Prize, the instructor should contact the Prize Office at prizes at fas.harvard.edu as soon as possible for instructions about how to petition for an exception. If both projects receive a Hoopes Prize, the nominator is eligible to receive only one full prize. An instructor may nominate no more than two projects in one academic year.

7. May an instructor nominate a group project for the Hoopes Prize?
No. The Hoopes Prize is designed to recognize individual student efforts; therefore, groups are not eligible to be nominated for the prize.  Instructors may nominate student work that was completed as part of a collaborative project as long as the student’s work can be specified and evaluated independently of the project as a whole.

8. May students ask their instructors to nominate their projects for a Hoopes Prize?
No. Nominations are made solely at the discretion of the instructors who directly supervised the projects.

Eligibility for Nomination

9. Does a project need to be a senior thesis in order to be eligible for the Hoopes Prize?
No. While most projects nominated for the Hoopes Prize are senior theses, junior papers or similar projects that were written or produced under faculty supervision may also be nominated. In consideration of their workload, the faculty members who read the submissions request that only work of very high quality be nominated.

10. Can creative writing entries such as a novel or a collection of poetry or short stories be nominated?
Yes. Creative writing entries are eligible for the prize.

11. If a student project is not a written piece (for example, it is a film, performance, or gallery show), can it still be nominated?
Yes. Entries such as films, performances, or gallery shows are eligible for the prize. Please contact the Prize Office at prizes at fas.harvard.edu as far in advance of the deadline as possible for further information.

12. Are the projects of November and March graduates eligible for the Hoopes Prize?
Yes. The projects of November and March graduates are eligible to be nominated for the Hoopes Prize in the academic year in which they were submitted to their departments. The work of undergraduates who received their degrees in November 2023, for example, would be eligible to be nominated for a Hoopes Prize in the spring of 2024.

13. If a department’s thesis deadline for its students falls after the Hoopes faculty nomination deadline, can deserving projects still be nominated for the prize?
If a project cannot be nominated by the Hoopes faculty nomination deadline because of a department’s thesis deadline, the instructor may petition the Prize Office before the current year’s Hoopes faculty nomination deadline for permission to submit the project to the following year’s competition.

14. Does the Hoopes Prize Committee take other factors into account if a student’s project was not an outstanding success but the student has many strengths?
No. The Hoopes Prize is a project-based prize. The committee members take into account only the merits of the project.

15. What role do summa ratings play in the Hoopes Prize?
The Hoopes Prize is awarded independent of summa ratings. Past winners have included senior theses that were not highly rated by their departments. Conversely, a summa rating does not guarantee a Hoopes Prize.

 

Student Application Forms

 

16. How does a nominee complete the student portion of the application?
Students whose projects have been nominated for a Hoopes Prize should follow the instructions found at the Instructions for Student Nominees page on the Prize Office’s website.

 

17. What is the project abstract and why is it needed?
Nominees are asked to write a 150- to 200-word abstract of their project for the non-specialist reader. This abstract, which must be the student’s own work, should describe the goals of the project, contextualize it within the broader parameters of its discipline, and highlight its importance. Even if an abstract is already included in a project, the student must write a new abstract specifically for the Hoopes Prize.

 

18. May students revise their projects in response to readers’ comments or other evaluations before submitting them for the Hoopes Prize?
No. A project should be submitted to the Hoopes Prize as it was submitted to the department, including its title.

 

19. What is the required format for written work being submitted for the Hoopes Prize?
Written submissions need to have at least one-inch margins on both the left- and the right-hand sides of each page for bookbinding purposes. Special attention should be paid to pages containing images, tables, and graphs to ensure that the margins are sufficient. A student submitting a non-written project, or a project with non-written components, should contact the Prize Office at prizes at fas.harvard.edu for further instructions as far in advance of the deadline as possible.

 

20. May students submit their applications before their instructors have submitted their nominations?
Yes. Once instructors have informed students of their intention to nominate the students' projects, the students should begin the application process.

 

21. May nominees make changes to their applications once they have been submitted?
No. Once an application has been submitted, no changes can be made to any part of it, including the abstract and the project. Nominees are advised to review their applications carefully before clicking the “Submit” button.

 

 

Readers’ Comments

 

22. What are readers’ comments?
Readers’ comments are the official evaluations that senior thesis graders submit to a student’s department. Though some departments do not use readers’ comments as part of their thesis evaluation process, if readers’ comments are required by the department, they are used in addition to the nominator’s project evaluation during the prize selection process.

 

23. How does the Prize Office get the readers’ comments?
The departments that produce readers’ comments as part of their thesis evaluation process send those comments directly to the Prize Office.

 

24. What happens if the readers’ comments will not be available until after the Hoopes deadlines?
Readers’ comments are the only portion of a Hoopes Prize application that can be submitted after the deadlines. Departments should email the readers’ comments to the Prize Office as soon as they are available.

 

25. If a student’s department does not produce readers’ comments, is the student’s project at a disadvantage?
No. The Hoopes Prize committee understands that some departments do not produce readers’ comments. Nominated projects are not disadvantaged by their absence.

 

 

Deadlines

 

26. Are the Hoopes Prize deadlines dependent on the location of the people submitting materials for the prize?

No. All application materials must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. eastern time on the day of the deadline. Prize Office deadlines are strictly observed.

 

27. Why are there two different deadlines?
The deadline for faculty nominations is two days earlier than the deadline for student submissions to give nominees time to complete their applications.

 

28. How far in advance should instructors and students begin working on their Hoopes Prize applications?
The Hoopes Prize applications have many parts and strict deadlines. Instructors and students are advised to begin the application process as soon as possible. Due to the tight timeframe of the Hoopes process, the Hoopes Prize deadlines are firm; no exceptions are made.

 

29. What should instructors and students do if they encounter difficulties with the application?
If instructors or students encounter difficulty with any portion of the Hoopes Prize application, they should immediately email the Prize Office (prizes at fas.harvard.edu).

 

 

Winning the Hoopes Prize

 

30. When will the Hoopes Prize winners be announced?
Hoopes Prize nominators and nominees will be notified of the Hoopes Prize Committee’s decision via email before Commencement.

 

31. What should student winners do if they would like to add an acknowledgments page to their winning projects?
Student Hoopes Prize winners who wish to add an acknowledgments page to their project may email the page as an attachment to the Prize Office (prizes at fas.harvard.edu) within a week of being notified that the project has won. The acknowledgments page will be inserted behind the title page of the project and therefore will not disrupt the project’s table of contents or page numbering. Students should not resubmit their entire projects.

 

32. What happens to winning projects?
A copy of each winning project is sent by the Prize Office to the University Archives for permanent storage. Written winning projects are also bound and displayed in Lamont Library for two academic years beginning with the fall term after the project has won. After the two-year period has passed, the Prize Office will mail the winners their projects.

 

33. Why do the nominators of winning projects, in addition to the nominees, receive prizes?
The Hoopes Prize is a teaching prize in addition to being a prize that recognizes student work. Prizes are therefore given to both the winning nominators and nominees.

 

34. May instructors have their winning Hoopes payments deposited into their research accounts?
This practice is not allowed because Hoopes payments must be treated as income to the recipient and paid through payroll. (See also the “Taxes on Prize Winnings” section of the General Information page of the Prize Office website.)

 

35. Can the Prize Office pay out all or part of a prize winner’s award money to someone else?
No. Prize winnings can only be distributed to the person who won the prize.