The students of SNHU are fortunate that administration and other departments are constantly looking for ways to reward students for their variety of talents. During the month of October, SNHU will be running two contests: SNHU’s Annual Fall Fiction Contest and the Art Exhibition Contest. Each one has a variety of prizes available to the winners including scholarships and features in SNHU’s publications.
The Annual Fall Fiction Contest is already active and will run until 4 p.m. on Wednesday, October 31. Participants must submit an original work of fiction that is no more than 1,500 words, and the contest is limited to one submission per person. Pieces must be double-spaced, submitted as a Microsoft Word document and formatted so that the author’s name and contact information is in the top left of the page.
First, second and third place winners of the contest will receive a SNHU notebook, and the books “Writing Down the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg and “2018: The Best American Short Stories.” The top three’s short stories will also be featured in the Penmen Review, and they will all receive a scholarship which can be used for an online or on campus bachelor’s or master’s degree. The first place scholarship amount will be $3,000, second place will be $2,000 and third place will be $1,000. Fourth and fifth place will receive a SNHU Notebook and “2018: The Best American Short Stories.”
The Art Exhibition Contest will be running until 8 p.m. on Sunday, November 4. This contest consists of five categories: Photography, Print Design, Web Design, Digital Design and 2D Animation, and 3D Modeling and Animation. Participants can submit one piece to each category, and have the opportunity to win in multiple categories. First place finalists from each category will receive a $1,000 SNHU scholarship for an online or on campus bachelor’s or master’s degree. Second place finalists will receive a $500 SNHU scholarship. All finalists will also gain a contributing membership to the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) which will allow them to network and find job or internship opportunities in the design community.
Both contests are open to all students and members of the general public who wish to participate, and there is no entry fee required to compete. Industry professionals and SNHU faculty members will collaborate on the judging panels to determine the finalists. For the Fiction Contest, judges will be looking for originality, thought process, structure and grammatical correctness. For the Art Exhibition Contest, judges will look for demonstrations of high levels of creativity, originality and execution that demonstrates a sophisticated understanding and application of the medium. The pieces will then be up for public voting where voters will be asked to consider the same criteria as the judging panels. The judges’ decisions will make up 80 percent of the overall score for each finalist and the voting will make up 20 percent.
Both of these contests are exciting and beneficial opportunities for students to show off what they are passionate about and hopefully get rewarded for it. To find out more about each contest, prospective participants should go to https://www.snhu.edu/online-degrees/online-creative-writing-degree-programs/fall-fiction-competition for the Fall Fiction Contest and https://www.snhu.edu/online-degrees/bachelors/ba-in-graphic-design-and-media-arts/art-showcase for the Art Exhibition Contest. Submissions can be made here: https://snhu.submittable.com/submit until the deadlines.
