Each year, the Howard B. Woolston Award for Academic Excellence is awarded to a graduating senior in the Department of Sociology. Howard B. Woolston was an active member of the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington from 1919 until 1948, serving as chair between 1919 and 1929. The Woolston Award was established in 1956 and is the first – and thereby oldest –endowed fund in the department.
Nominees usually have at least a 3.70 grade point average in sociology, and a GPA of at least 3.50 overall. Students are nominated for the award by faculty, instructors and teaching assistants in the department.
This year the awards committee has selected Ava Finn as the winner of the Howard B. Woolston Award.
Ava’s experience at UW has been characterized by a series of exciting paths which she has uncovered by her eagerness to dig deeply into a wide variety of subjects. Initially envisioning herself completing a pre-medical track with a goal to become a surgeon, she realized her passions didn’t align with a medical career and switched to a double major track in Sociology and History-Race, Gender, and Power.
Academically, she also completed three Honors programs including: the Sociology Departmental Honors Program, Interdisciplinary Honors Program, and the History Departmental Honors Program challenging herself with creative and complex coursework.
In 2023, Ava attended the Summer Institute in the Arts and Humanities. Her acceptance into the program included a $6,000 award as a named Mary Gates Research Scholar where she presented her work, Dimensions of a Frame: Black Female Awkwardness in the Post-Obama Television Period.
While in the the Sociology Departmental Honors Program, she produced her thesis Institutional Response to Criminal Deviance: The National Hockey League and Player Criminality presenting her work both orally and with a poster at the 2024 Undergraduate Research Symposium and the Sociology Department’s Honors Symposium.
Ava says “I fell in love with research writing my theses, I was also confronted with a new area of inquiry: the law. In my sociological work, I found myself citing law review articles heavily and running into complex legal questions that I couldn’t leave alone. Once I began my historical thesis, I again found myself left with questions of the court system’s evolution since 1692 that were beyond the scope of my paper. Ultimately, I decided to embrace my pull toward the law, and am now confident in my goal of attending law school and working as a legal academic in my future.”
Congratulations Ava Finn, we look forward to cheering you on in your future endeavors!