CNU senior takes honors at Phi Alpha Theta regional conference

News Release - April 3, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Public's contact for information:
Dr. Nigel Sellars
History Department
(757) 594-7077

Media contact:
Carolyn Cuthrell
Office of Communications and Public Relations
carolyn.cuthrell@cnu.edu
(757) 594-7331

(NEWPORT NEWS, Va.) — Christopher Newport University student Lindsey Michelle Newman took second place honors for Best Undergraduate Paper in World History at the 2007 Phi Alpha Theta Virginia Regional Conference held March 31 at James Madison University in Harrisonburg.

CNU has also been selected as the host for the 2008 regional conference, a first for the University.

Approximately 100 students from across Virginia attended the conference held in JMU’s Festival Hall. This is only the second time CNU students have participated in the conference and the first time a student has been so honored.

Newman’s paper, on the relations between the Nahua Indians and Spanish missionaries in sixteenth century Mexico, was written for a senior seminar in history taught by Dr. William Connell. The paper was chosen from a field of over thirty papers submitted for the annual conference.

Newman, who lives in Yorktown, is a member of CNU’s Alpha Zeta Mu Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta and serves as its president. The chapter was chartered in 1993 and will hold its fifteenth initiation ceremony on April 14. The chapter adviser is Dr. Nigel Sellars, associate professor of history at CNU.

A senior at CNU, Newman is a graduate of Denbigh Baptist High School. She plans to earn her doctorate in history and has already been accepted into the graduate programs in history at Virginia Tech, American University, Old Dominion, George Washington University and George Mason University.

Also presenting at the conference was Shelby Blair, a senior from Richmond, who delivered a paper on the development and evolution of professional wrestling characters and perceptions of masculinity over the last three decades.

Founded at the University of Arkansas in 1921, Phi Alpha Theta is an international history honor society whose goal is to promote the study of history through the encouragement of research, good teaching, publication and the exchange of learning and ideas among bring students, teachers and writers of history. Phi Alpha Theta has over eight hundred thirty-nine chapters in fifty states, more than any other accredited four-year college honor society. Since 1921, more than 281,000 students have been initiated into the society.

For more information, please contact Dr. Nigel Sellars at (757) 594-7077 or nsellars@cnu.edu.