On Sept. 1, junior Shreyas Karnam was awarded second place in the 2026 David McCullough Essay Prize contest in the Research category. This award is given annually by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American Institute of American History. Karnam’s essay–‘We Are Rising’: Black Classicists and the Nineteenth-Century Reform of Greco-Roman Studies—was one of 765 total submissions from 41 states, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and Taiwan. For his accomplishment, Karnam was awarded $1,500 and an additional $500 was award to Harker.