Today we’re announcing an all-star list of Wesleyan alumni to serve as judges for the new Wesleyan University Hamilton Prize for Creativity. Their accomplishments are a testament to Wesleyan’s outsized role as an incubator of some of today’s most boundary-breaking thinkers, artists and writers. I’m so pleased that these extraordinary contributors to our society and culture have generously agreed to volunteer their time to select our first Hamilton Prize recipient, who will be named later in the spring.
The committee’s honorary chairs are Thomas Kail ’99 and Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02, Hon. ’15, and the prize is named in their honor for their now famous achievement in creating the cultural phenomenon Hamilton: An American Musical. The prize will be awarded to an incoming student who has submitted a creative written work judged to best reflect the originality, artistry and dynamism embodied in Hamilton.
I look forward with great enthusiasm to finding out which incoming Wesleyan student will be chosen by the committee to receive this exceptional honor, which includes a four-year full-tuition scholarship.
The deadline for submissions for the Hamilton Prize and to apply to Wesleyan is January 1, 2017. You can read more about the Hamilton Prize and the committee here.