Scholarship Information
Phi Alpha Theta awards six prizes annually for outstanding papers written by members of the honor society:
•The George P. Hammond Prize of $500 for the best paper by a graduate student member of Phi Alpha Theta
•The Lynn W. Turner Prize of $500 for the best paper by an undergraduate student member of Phi Alpha Theta
•The Nels Andrew Cleven Founder’s Paper Prize Awards: two undergraduate and two graduate awards of $400 each for superior papers submitted by student members of Phi Alpha Theta
The essays should combine original historical research on significant subjects, based on source material and manuscripts if possible, with good English composition and superior style.
Entries must be received by July 1, 2026
Only Email submissions will be accepted.
Please send to: PATPaperPrizeAwards@g.fmarion.edu
To submit your paper for a Paper Prize Award, please note the following. Failure to follow the submission formatting will invalidate your entry.
Your email subject line should read: 2026 PAT Paper Prize UNDERGRADUATE submission (UG) OR 2026 PAT Paper Prize GRADUATE (GR) submission (select and use only one category, UG (undergrad) or GR (grad), depending on your submission status)
Your email text body should include the following information in this order:
Name
College Affiliation
Paper Title
Mailing Address
Phone Number
Email Address
College/University where you joined Phi Alpha Theta*
Year inducted*
*Note: The competition is open only to Phi Alpha Theta Members. Your membership will be verified by the National Office, and if you are not a member, you will be ineligible to take part in the competition.
Submit your essay as an attachment to your email as an MS Word document or pdf, i.e. do not cut and paste your essay into the body of the e-mail. (You will be notified if your file cannot be opened and will be allowed to resend one time before August 1, one month after the deadline)
Important! The Title Page should only include the title of your essay. Do not include your Name or College affiliation on the title page. Students should also eliminate footers or headers, bearing the student’s name from individual pages of the paper, but pages must be consecutively numbered.
PAPERS SHOULD NOT EXCEED 25 TYPEWRITTEN DOUBLE-SPACED PAGES IN LENGTH (excluding bibliography). Papers submitted for consideration should be organized in a form similar to articles published in The Historian with footnotes, spelling, and punctuation conforming as nearly as possible to the rules of A Manual of Style (10th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937, or later). A bibliography must be included with the submitted paper.
Entries that do not comply with these guidelines will be disqualified.
ONLY ONE SUBMISSION PER STUDENT IS ALLOWED
* The applicant is responsible for ensuring that all required documentation is received by the competition deadline. Incomplete applications or those submitted after the deadline or by individuals whose membership in Phi Alpha Theta cannot be verified will not be considered for the competition.
Note: In all academic work, the ideas and contributions of others must be appropriately acknowledged, and work that is presented as original must in fact BE original. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as ChatGPT will likely create significant breakthroughs in a wide range of fields, using an AI-content generator to produce scholarly work without proper attribution or authorization is a form of academic dishonesty. In accepting scholarly work for conference presentation, prize/award consideration or publication in the PAT newsletter or The Historian, Phi Alpha Theta expects its members to uphold the honorable standards of our Society by researching, composing and submitting their own original work. In this way, faculty and student members of Phi Alpha Theta can all share in nurturing and protecting the integrity and fairness of our Society’s intellectual enterprise. Submitting content to Phi Alpha Theta that has been generated by someone else, or was created or assisted by a computer application such as ChatGPT, will result in immediate disqualification from conference, award or publication consideration.