Each spring, the graduate committee asks faculty to submit nominations for two awards that honor current graduate students and their vital contributions to the department: the Exemplary Graduate Student Assistant Award and the Award for Excellence in Public History Practice. From grading papers to guiding undergraduates through challenging material, from leading review sessions to contributing to research, outreach, and more, graduate assistants wear many hats. This year’s recipients stood out for their meaningful contributions and the impact they made on the department. 

Exemplary Graduate Student Assistant Award

The Exemplary Graduate Student Assistant Award recognizes the contributions of graduate students in their role as graduate assistants. They support professors, undergraduate students, and the department in many ways, such as grading, tutoring students, running review sessions, teaching, assisting with research, and more. The award honors a student whose work exemplifies the highest level of professional dedication to these responsibilities.

This year, two students were selected to jointly receive the award: Paige Carter and Mason Keyser. Paige and Mason were both graduate assistants for professor Dennis Halpin’s HIST 3914 class, a critical reading and analysis course. In his nomination letter for the two students, Halpin acknowledged that while it’s a bit unusual to nominate two students together, both students had truly excelled in his course and exceeded his expectations. 

Each week, they met separately with small groups of undergraduate students who submitted discussion questions in advance, guiding small group discussions and helping students refine their ideas. Outside of class, Mason and Paige provided detailed, thoughtful feedback on students’ rough drafts —an invaluable service in a writing-intensive course with seventeen students. “The detailed comments Paige and Mason provided greatly helped students learn the craft of evaluating historiography,” said Halpin. “Mason and Paige were exceptional teaching assistants and played a crucial role in helping our undergraduate students become better thinkers and writers.” 

Award for Excellence in Public History Practice

The Award for Excellence in Public History Practice recognizes exemplary accomplishments in the practice of public history as demonstrated through leadership in campus projects, contributions to the department’s outreach mission, and/or excellence in the internship experience. Two students received the award this year: Miles Abernethy, nominated by Paul Quigley, and Mason Keyser, nominated by Jessica Taylor and Mark Barrow. 

Miles Abernethy demonstrated outstanding dedication to the field of public history through his extensive work with the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies and as an intern with the National Park Service at Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania during the summer of 2023 and at the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation in the summer of 2024. Miles also volunteered at the Appomattox site in order to gain additional experience within the National Park Service — experience that led to his hire as a seasonal ranger. 

Miles’s impressive public engagement includes presenting the “Traveling Trunk of Civil War History” to elementary school students, assisting with event organization, organizing a table showcasing Civil War related collections at the annual Civil War Weekend, and revising the “Civil War Driving Tour of Southwest Virginia” brochure. “Miles is always willing to go above and beyond in order to support our public history efforts,” said Quigley. “I am sure he has a glittering career in public history ahead of him!”

Mason Keyser, a historian of environmental and Indigenous history, has exemplified the values of public history through his collaborative spirit, intellectual curiosity, and commitment to meaningful, community-centered work. He has contributed significantly to projects with real-world impact, such as processing oral histories for the Mattaponi Indian Tribe that will be used in their case for federal recognition. “Not only was he respectful of the material, which was politically sensitive, but he mentored an undergraduate student who was also working on the project,” said Taylor and Barrow in their nomination letter.  

Mason has also been a key member of several oral history fieldwork teams, organizing visits with migrant farmworkers in Eastern Virginia and interviewing tribal members and other residents for the Rappahannock Indian Tribe archive. Mason has built strong relationships across Virginia. Through all of these efforts, Mason has built strong community and tribal-centered relationships across the Commonwealth. Barrow and Taylor said, “He and his work stand to make lasting contributions to more equitable and thoughtful interpretation of Virginian history.” 

Written by: Cammie Sgarrella