We congratulate Benjamin Block on his reception of this year’s “Founder’s Award” from the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy (SMRP) for a paper entitled “Thomas Aquinas on Knowing Essences and Substances.” He will present his work in a future SMRP-sponsored session (to be announced, in due course, on the SMRP website). Block successfully defended his dissertation, written under the direction of Gregory Doolan, on May 1, 2019, and has accepted a position at Thomas Aquinias College, in California.

There have been eleven recipients of the Founder’s Award since 2005. Beside Block, four additional prizewinners are closely associated with the School of Philosophy. Francis Feingold (2018) and Therese Cory (2011) also earned their doctorates with us, he in 2017 and she in 2009. Stephen Ogden joined our faculty in the year he won the prize (2017). Gloria Frost (2012) first encountered medieval philosophy as a student in our undergraduate program, from which she graduated in 2004.