Maureen Sullivan Wenz Memorial Award

The Maureen Sullivan Wenz Memorial Award is given for outstanding work and service in Political Science by a Bronx major.

Maureen Sullivan Wenz was a political science major at Hunter-in-the-Bronx (later Lehman College) in the early 1960s. Wenz went on to teach in the Bronx before her early, tragic death in 1963. The award was established soon after to commemorate her intellectual promise and commitment to public service. First given in 1964, the award has since been presented to outstanding political science majors whose achievements and service reflect the values she embodied.

Edgar Dawson Prize on Political and Legal Theory

The Edgar Dawson Prize on Political and Legal Theory is awarded to outstanding seniors for excellence in political thought and the study of law.

Edgar Dawson was a professor of government at Hunter-in-the-Bronx, which later became Lehman College, from 1909 to 1939. A national leader in civic and social-studies education, he wrote influential works on representative government, civil-service reform, and the teaching of the Constitution. He helped found the National Council for the Social Studies and served as its first secretary from 1921 to 1928. The prize honors his belief that rigorous political thought should be joined to a clear understanding of public law and democratic institutions.

Patrick V. Peppe Award

The Patrick V. Peppe Award is given to outstanding seniors who combine academic excellence with service to their community.

Pat Peppe joined the political science department at Lehman in 1970 and taught there for twenty years. A graduate of the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind and Harvard College, he wrote about labor and political struggle in Latin America, especially in Chile. His memorial in Socialism and Democracy reads:

Pat Peppe’s 49 years of life were a triumph over adversity. He suffered from a disease, Marfan syndrome, which caused his blindness at the age of 15. Pat shared with many visually-impaired people a remarkable courage and resolve never to allow his disability to prevent him from living his life fully.

[Pat was] a man of broad interests and the ability to translate those interests into creative work. A graduate of Harvard, with a cum laude degree in history, and of Columbia University’s graduate school, where in 1971 he obtained his doctorate in Latin American politics, Pat joined the political science faculty at Herbert H. Lehman College in 1970 and, in his own words, “remained there, happily, ever since.”

Young Kun Kim–William Bosworth Memorial Award

The Young Kun Kim–William Bosworth Memorial Award is given to outstanding seniors in the field of political science.

Young Kun Kim spent half a century, from 1967 to 2017, in Lehman’s political science department. A political theorist, he had grown up in Korea during Japanese occupation and the Korean War. At Lehman, he specialized in comparative political thought and in the Korean peninsula and China. He taught at the CUNY Graduate Center for forty-five years. His courses in political thought shaped four generations of students.

William Bosworth taught political science at the Lehman College from 1960 until his retirement in 1999. A comparative politics scholar and Chair of Political Science for many years, he founded and directed the Bronx Data Center, a public resource that uses U.S. Census data to map demographic change and social conditions in the Bronx. Alumni remember him for his patience, care, and intellectual rigor, especially in long-running courses on American government and constitutional law.