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Days before commencement, during a ceremony held in Webb Hall in front of faculty and members of the graduates’ families, Emily Bittner became the 2006 winner of the Partridge Award while Zacharia Eastman won the Hart Award. Both prizes are the Department of English’s top graduation tributes.
Given annually to the graduating senior English major with the highest grade-point average (GPA), the Partridge Award was first presented in 1978 and is usually accompanied by a selection of books. It honors Norwich founder Alden Partridge who first named the university the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy.
Bittner, who graduated with a GPA of 3.8, was deliberately given titles that had an environmental theme when she was presented with the Partridge. In a survey of English majors done during the previous fall semester, Bittner proposed an “Environmental Literature” course be offered by the department. As a result, Daniel Lane, associate professor of English, offered the class which she enrolled in during the spring semester. To mark her advocacy for the course, Bittner was given Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (the 150th anniversary edition), Linda Greenlaw’s The Hungry Ocean, David T. Suzuki’s When the Wild Comes Leaping Up, and Wyman Richardson’s House on Nauset Marsh. Both Thoreau and Richardson lived in and wrote about Bittner’s home state of Massachusetts. When Patricia Ferreira, department chair, presented Bittner with the award and books, she said that Walden alsoseemed a pertinent choice because of Thoreau’s celebrated civil disobedience in which he advocated a broader vision of human rights. Bittner has expressed aspirations to study law and Ferreira noted the important relationship between dissent and the nation’s legal framework.
The Hart Award, first presented in 1983, honors Dr. Loring Hart, professor of English and Norwich president. Like the Partridge Award, it is given annually, however, to a senior English major who has contributed the most to the department. In granting the award to Eastman, he was extolled for a litany of service. An active member of Sigma Tau Delta, the honor society for English majors and minors, Eastman, along with rising-senior Jennifer Retasket, proposed a complete make-over of the Norwich English program as faculty began a self study required for the university’s accreditation. He was also the 2005-2006 Presidential Fellow, representing the Humanities Division to the top echelon of the university administration. Moreover, Eastman helped edit and contributed poetry to the 2006 issue of the Chameleon, the student literary annual, and was also a frequent contributor to Work Sighted. Beyond his service to the department, Eastman also traveled to Tanzania with Service-Learning, participating in the semester-abroad program.
Ferreira noted that in each of these capacities Eastman represented what Norwich University advances as the primary mission of the institution, graduating an individual who embodies success because of his intellectual rigor—he graduated with a 3.6 GPA—and because of the bold leadership with which he serves his community.
