Excellence is Personal

Mar 22, 2013

Excellence winners with Domingo Martinez and Neal ConanTwo award-winning writers urged students to set and keep personal standards in their pursuit of excellence.

This was the advice of Neil Conan of National Public Radio and Domingo Martinez, National Book Award nonfiction finalist, to students during the annual Celebration of Excellence luncheon held in conjunction with the National Book Awards at Concordia event.

First-year students Alexandra Buck, Waconia, Minn., and Ross Baumgardner, Moorhead, were honored for writing the best research papers in their Inquiry Seminar classes. Buck’s paper was titled “Belonging to the worst and then to Christ: Psychological effects of being a Romanov bride.” Baumgardner’s paper from a literature class was titled “Snape’s Adversarial Role.”

Martinez, author of the memoir “The Boy Kings of Texas,” urged students to establish personal standards of excellence and then keep pursuing those standards.

“Staying true and dedicated to your standards is the trick to finding and maintaining excellence,” says Martinez.

Conan, who began his career in radio at 17, says there is a difference to achieving excellence in school and being excellent in a career.

“Once into the world, you will be motivated to find excellence because you’ll be terrified at being discovered that you really don’t know everything,” Conan says. “Excellence is your own standard by which you’ll be measured, so you need to always pay attention to your inner voice.”

In presenting the student writing awards, Dr. Mark Krejci, provost and dean of the college, says the research papers clearly impressed the faculty judges.

“Your writing touched us in some way,” Krejci says. “Your writing taught us something and impacted us in some way by how you demonstrated the importance of good writing. Your papers are examples of the power and importance of the written word and how that impacts our minds and souls.”

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