The Hester A. Davis Outstanding Anthropology Student Award is hosted by the Department of Sociology, Criminology, and Anthropology at the University of Central Arkansas The purpose of the Award is the recognition of excellence in undergraduate scholarly and community contributions within the discipline of anthropology at UCA.
Students are nominated based on, but not limited to, an evaluation of the following criteria:
- Membership in professional and honorary organizations within the Department, College, or academic field.
- Participation in Department or College sponsored service activities.
- Scholarly achievements (undergraduate thesis, publications, conference presentations, data collection, etc.) that merit consideration.
Awards are presented at the Department Award ceremony at the end of each academic semester. For more information about the Hester A. Davis Award please contact Charlie Grant at cgrant2@uca.edu.
Previous Award Recipients:
| Breanna Wilbanks (Spring 2016) Katelyn Trammell (Spring 2017) Anna Suarez (Fall 2017) |
Jennifer Kunkle (Fall 2018) Bailey Christ (Spring 2019) Jacob Madle (Fall 2019) |
Hester A. Davis was an important and influential person in the anthropology of Arkansas and broke many gender barriers with regard to women in archaeology beginning in the 1940s and throughout her life. She was an advocate for the preservation of cultural heritage and the promotion of historic preservation legislation with a focus on public archaeology as a mechanism to engage communities in a shared heritage. She was instrumental in the formation of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, the statewide resource for the protection and management of cultural resources in Arkansas. She served as the first Arkansas state archaeologist from 1967 until her retirement in 1999.