Awards and Rankings
President
December 7, 2017
Six students and three faculty members have been selected to help determine the recipients of the 2018 Opus Prize, a $1.2 million annual award that recognizes individuals or organizations who address persisting social problems within their communities.
The six student and three faculty ambassadors will accompany members of the Opus Prize Foundation Board on site visits next spring to the communities of three Opus Prize finalists. While the destinations of these site visits remain confidential, the nine ambassadors will travel in teams of three to the specific locations where the Opus Prize finalists carry out their work.
The six Student Ambassadors include:
The three Faculty Ambassadors selected to accompany two students each on the site visits include:
The Student Ambassadors were selected through a process that began with a video submission in which they reflected upon an unsung hero who inspired them. From the initial pool of 35 applicants, a small number of students were invited to in-person interviews with the UP Opus Prize Steering Committee of faculty and staff. From those interviews, the six finalists were chosen to represent the University as Student Ambassadors. The applicants who were not selected as Student Ambassadors will be invited to participate in planning and hosting the campus events during Opus Prize Week from November 11-15, 2018.
The Faculty Ambassadors were chosen by an external selection process that included in-person interviews with members of the greater Portland community who travel to locations with critical needs and who work with populations often pushed to the margins of society.
As part of the interview process, the student and faculty candidates were asked to select which of the six Opus Prize core values spoke most strongly to them: social entrepreneurship, transformational leadership, sustainable change, faith, unsung heroes, and life of service. With these values in mind, the student and faculty ambassadors will collaborate with the Opus Prize Foundation Board to witness and evaluate the work of the finalists through the personal encounters of the site visits.
About the Opus Prize
The Opus Prize Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsors the Opus Prize, an annual, faith-based humanitarian award recognizing individuals internationally and domestically who are addressing persistent and pressing social problems within their communities. Each year, the Opus Prize Foundation chooses a Catholic university to serve as its partner in selecting the Opus Prize laureates and finalists. The award is one of the world's largest faith-based awards for social entrepreneurship, composed of one $1 million award and two $100,000 prizes.
The University of Portland will host a week-long celebration in Portland from November 11-15, 2018, during which all three finalists will be on campus to visit classrooms and engage in conversation with the University community and the greater Portland community. This week will culminate in the Opus Prize Awards Ceremony on November 15, when the $1 million award and two $100,000 prizes will be announced.
For more information about the Opus Prize, please visit www.opusprize.org. For additional information about the University of Portland’s partnership with the Opus Prize Foundation, please contact Dan McGinty, Director of the Dundon-Berchtold Institute for Moral Formation & Applied Ethics, at 503.943.7596 or at mcgintyd@up.edu.
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