The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences announced a new prize for students in the Classical & Near Eastern Studies and history departments, which memorializes a late professor, in a release last week.
The Diane Harris Cline Memorial Prize for Classics and History will be awarded to a student in either department who completes a research project related to antiquities or a digital humanities project. Her husband and fellow CANES professor, Eric Cline, said he hopes the award provides the opportunity to recognize student achievements and have her legacy live on at GW.
The prize was one of the most contributed-to funds in CCAS on Giving Day in 2024, according to the release. Cline said he was “pleased” to hear that people wanted to contribute to her memory and the prize in her name.
“I’m grateful for all the assistance from the GW Development team members for helping to make this happen and to everyone who donated towards this prize,” Cline said in an email. “Hopefully we’ll be able to award the first one next year and continue on from there.”
Cline said he wanted to create the award to honor his wife’s memory at GW and the “impact” she had on students through teaching and advising.
“Before she passed, we had actually talked about the fact that there were no prizes in the Classics Department for the best capstone project or senior thesis or in the History Department for the best project in digital history, Cline said in an email. “So I thought it would work well to create a prize which would remedy that situation in both departments and which I knew she would have appreciated.”
Cline, known to many of her students as Lady Cline, passed away in July 2023 at the age of 62 after battling cancer for more than a year. She taught at GW for more than 14 years after starting at the University as a visiting associate professor in the Classical & Ancient Near Eastern Studies department.
Cline won numerous awards during her time at GW, including the Columbian Prize for Teaching and Mentoring Advanced Undergraduate Students in 2017 and the Morton A. Bender Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018. She was twice named a Fulbright Scholar, a title awarded to academics who conduct international or cross-cultural research.
