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Awards were presented June 5 at the Hooding and Pinning Ceremony in Rockefeller Chapel.  

The Divinity School recognized students across degree programs with annual prizes and fellowships. The awards were presented during the Hooding and Pinning Ceremony at Rockefeller Chapel in conjunction with the University of Chicago's 540th Convocation on June 5, 2026.

Prizes

John Gray Rhind Award: Delaney Beh (MDiv). Presented to a graduating Master of Divinity student whose excellence in academic and professional training gives notable promise of a significant contribution to the service of others. Beh came to the Divinity School to pursue chaplaincy and found a vocation in preaching and congregational leadership during a field placement at First Congregational Church of Glen Ellyn. Their thesis, "The Courage to Be Church," calls on religious communities to take up spiritual practice and moral leadership in a season of institutional anxiety. Beh will continue with the Glen Ellyn congregation as they prepare for ordination in the United Church of Christ.

J. Coert Rylaarsdam Prize: Rachel Abdoler (PhD). Honors a student who has made special efforts to promote interfaith relations across the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, through curricular or extracurricular work. Abdoler's dissertation, "Between Defense and Devotion: Butrus al-Sadamantī's Kitāb al-Tashīh in its 13th Century Copto-Islamic Milieu," studies a thirteenth-century Coptic monk in Egypt who wrote in Arabic, drew on a source from another confession, and defended the integrity of the biblical text against contemporary critics. The work moves across the Abrahamic traditions while attending to what is distinct in each. The prize honors J. Coert Rylaarsdam, PhD '44, an early advocate for the study of Judaism and Islam at the University.

The Divinity School Prize for Excellence in Teaching: Lauren Beversluis. Recognizes doctoral students who demonstrate excellence in teaching and learning.

Tikva Frymer-Kensky Memorial Prize: Lucas Depierre. Awarded for the most accomplished essay integrating at least two of the fields central to Professor Frymer-Kensky's scholarship: Hebrew Bible, biblical law, ancient Near Eastern studies, and ritual or feminist theology. “Being an Island: From Presence to Meaning in the Treatises of Teresa de Cartagena.”

Milo P. Jewett Prize: Benjamin Porter. Awarded for the best paper translating, interpreting, or applying scripture to a contemporary situation. “A Bloody Impasse at Hosea 6:8–9: Reassessing the Lexical Semantics of ʾĂqubbāh and the Syntax of Derek Yǝrāsǝhū Šekmāh."

Rashed and Elkhoraiby Islamic Studies Graduate Student Prize: Yousef Aly (MA, Divinity; PhD student, Middle Eastern Studies). Awarded for the best paper in Islamic studies by a University of Chicago graduate student. “Between Law and the
Unseen: Human-Jinn Marriage and the Boundaries of the Human in Islamic Jurisprudence.”

Noyes-Cutter Prize: Trevor Gillis. Recognizes an outstanding paper on an aspect of Koine Greek relating to the texts of the New Testament or other ambient sources. Gillis won for "Word Order and Information Structure in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31: A Pragmatic Approach and Its Implications for Translation."

Buechner Writing Prize: Anna Zeisel (MDiv). Honors an MDiv student who shows the ability to communicate religious scholarship for a broad audience, drawn from the public essay component of the MDiv thesis project. Zeisel's thesis project, "On Longing, Absence, and The Uses of Traditional Prayer in Contemporary Jewish Life," and its companion essay, "After Nostalgia: Absence, Longing, and the New American Jew," read tradition and lived experience together. For Zeisel, writing serves as both a spiritual practice and a form of religious leadership.

Fellowships

Anthony C. Yu Doctoral Student Fellowship: Tommaso Bacci, Danica Cao, Anthony Beall, and Jake Sirota. The fellowship supports doctoral students in completing their dissertation research. It honors Anthony C. Yu (1938–2015), Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, who brought Eastern and Western traditions together in the study of religion and literature.

Alma Wilson Teaching Fellows, 2026–2027: Anthony Beall and Danica Cao, with Pieter Hoekstra (deferred from 2025–2026). The fellowship gives doctoral students with a strong teaching record the chance to design and teach a course of their own in the Undergraduate Program in Religious Studies.

Grants

International Ministry Study Grants: Margaret (Meg) Guzulescu and Joshua Wagner. The grants support student research and ministry work abroad.

See the full list of Divinity School student prizes at divinity.uchicago.edu/prizes.