SCSECS is pleased to announce the establishment of a Graduate Student Travel Fund. This fund will provide small awards every year to assist a few graduate students with the cost of traveling to the annual SCSECS conference.

Grants will be awarded on the basis of merit with the added understanding that recipients will be active participants in the conference, attending general sessions and plenary events in addition to presenting their own paper. Details about the application process and deadline will be posted on the SCSECS website in October.

These fellowships will be funded entirely by donations from our members, so please consider making a donation right now. Our officers have collectively pledged more than $300, getting the fund off to an excellent start. The names of all donors will be printed in the 2008 conference program, and we will all enjoy the satisfaction of ensuring the future vibrancy of this organization by helping to welcome our junior scholars into it.

No donation is too small! Please send checks made out to SCSECS to Laura Stevens, SCSECS Past President, Department of English, University of Tulsa, 600 S. College Ave., Tulsa OK 74104-3189.

At the 2002 meeting at South Padre Island, the SCSECS executive board initiated a new annual conference award, the coveted SCSECS Presidential Prize. The prize is awarded to the author of the best conference paper in any and all categories.

The winner of this prize receives something better than mere money: publication of an enhanced version of the winning paper in the next available volume of 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, the award-winning annual journal edited by SCSECS Past President Kevin L. Cope.

Unlike a few coins in the pocket, the SCSECS Presidential Prize is a treasure for life, in that it persists in the curriculum vitae and influences the development of a professional life from the intellectual cradle to the intellectual grave. Be sure to submit your paper immediately after the annual meeting!

Several Noel Foundation Fellowships, awarded by the James Smith Noel Foundation of Shreveport, Louisiana, have been presented to members of the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies since the very first fellowships were given out in 1998. The results were so fruitful, at past SCSECS conferences we've featured special panels to showcase our members' findings.

Fellowships include a $500 travel stipend and star treatment at the Noel Collection, a unique collection of rare printed materials from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries.

For information about award eligibility and application procedures, please visit the Noel Collection web site.