Departmental Prizes and Awards

Cecil W. Wooten Award

This award is named in honor of Cecil W. Wooten who received his PhD from this department in 1972 and returned to join the faculty in 1981.  For over thirty years, from the time he joined the faculty until his retirement in 2012, Professor Wooten directed the elementary Latin program, training and mentoring scores of graduate students in Latin pedagogy.  He also regularly taught popular large lecture courses, including CLAS 122, The Romans, and CLAS 242, Sex and Gender in the Ancient World, in which he mentored dozens more graduate student TAs.  The Wooten award is named in his honor, in recognition of his contributions to the training of graduate student teachers in the department. For current and previous prize winners, see the Prize Winners Past and Present page.

The Epps Prize in Greek Studies

This award was established in 1983 through a bequest of Preston H. Epps, a faculty member in the Department starting in 1915 and Professor of Greek from 1943 until his retirement in 1961.  Two Epps prizes are awarded annually, one to a graduate student and one to an undergraduate, to those students whom, as the late Professor Epps stipulated in his will, the faculty of the Department of Classics judge to show “the greatest interest and promise in coming to understand the Greek language, literature, history, and outlook.”  The graduate prize carries an award of $3,500.  Students do not apply, but are nominated by faculty members and selected in the spring semester by a departmental faculty committee.  All junior and senior Classics majors and minors and graduate students of Greek at UNC are eligible.  For current and previous prize winners, see the Prize Winners Past and Present page.