Grinnell Prize Nominations

Oct 10, 2014

Nominations for the 2015 Grinnell Prize are due by Monday, Dec. 1, 2014.

Grinnell College is seeking nominations for the 2015 Grinnell Prize. The award program — which annually presents winners with a prize of $100,000 — honors innovators who have demonstrated leadership in their fields and who show creativity, commitment, and extraordinary accomplishment in effecting positive social change.

“The Grinnell Prize reflects our College’s longstanding commitment to educating men and women who will make a difference in the world,” says President Raynard S. Kington. “We have been impressed by the high quality of nominations that we’ve received in the first years of the prize, and our students benefit greatly from interacting with Grinnell Prize recipients in the classroom and in informal settings on campus. The Grinnell Prize honors those who ‘practice what we teach,’ and we are pleased to have this forum to recognize young people who are raising visibility and creating innovative solutions for some of the world’s most pressing issues.”

Past nominations have spanned a diverse array of social issues, including hunger relief, childhood education, environmental issues, literacy, youth arts, fair housing, violence prevention, immigration, GLBTQ services, hospice care, children’s mental health and global peace, among many others.

Previous recipients of the Grinnell Prize:

2011 – Eric W. Glustrom and Boris Bulayev, Educate!; James Kofi Annan, Challenging Heights; and Rabbi Melissa Weintraub, Encounter

2012 – Cristi Hegranes, Global Press Institute; Jacob Wood and William McNulty, Team Rubicon; and Jane Chen and Linus Liang, Embrace

2013 – Emily Arnold-Fernández, Asylum Access, and Elizabeth Scharpf and Julian Ingabire Kayibanda, SHE

2014 – Lindsay Stradley and Ani Vallabhaneni, Sanergy, and Adam Kircher and Kiah Williams, SIRUM

About the Grinnell Prize

The Grinnell Prize directly reflects Grinnell’s historic mission to educate men and women “who are prepared in life and work to use their knowledge and their abilities to serve the common good.”

Nominations are open to U.S. citizens as well as nationals of other countries. The program hopes to attract nominations across a wide range of fields, including science, medicine, the environment, humanities, business, economics, education, law, public policy, social services, religion and ethics, as well as projects that cross these boundaries.

Grinnell especially hopes to receive nominations for innovators working on domestic issues in the US. No affiliation with Grinnell College is required.


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