Indiana Wesleyan University student, Shiloh Hines, recently received the de Jager Prize for exceptional academic performance during his semester abroad in Oxford, United Kingdom. Hines was one of 10 students who received the highly valued honor.
Hines participated in BestSemester’s Scholars’ Semester in Oxford (SSO) during the fall semester of 2016 where he studied at the historic University of Oxford. SSO is organized by the Scholarship & Christianity in Oxford (SCIO), the UK center of the Council for Christian Colleges & University.
“My time at Oxford greatly helped my growth as a scholar and academic,” said Hines, an English and Writing major who graduated from IWU on Saturday. “The largest impact that Oxford University had upon my educational experience was in learning how to develop my own scholarly questions and defend them in front of a professor as I would a dissertation.”
The de Jager Prize is awarded at the end of each SSO semester. Essays written for three SSO courses—Integrative Seminar, British Studies and Thesis—are evaluated for scholarly excellence by SSO faculty. Winning essays show originality of conception, ease of handling primary and secondary sources, professional handling of scholarly apparatus, lucid and stylistically appropriate prose, a sustained argument and effective rebuttal of counterarguments.
Hines’ three winning essays were written for his British Studies course and covered the following topics: Robin Hood's impact and importance throughout British literature through the ages, witchcraft and magic as seen by Shakespeare and contemporaries, and British views of mental illness as portrayed in Virginia Woolf's “Mrs. Dalloway.”
According to a letter issued by SCIO directors, “Shiloh was a very welcome addition to the semester, showing outstanding application and ability.”