Kathleen Foley, a Ph.D. graduate student in city and regional planning, has received a 2006 Trustees' Merit Citation from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The award includes $12,500 in financial support for Foley's work on the dissertation, "Islamic Centers and Land Use Conflict in the Suburbs: Designs for a Place in the American Landscape and Membership in the American Polity." Foley was one of three finalists for the foundation's 2006 Carter Manny Award. The awards fund the research and writing of academic dissertations on architecture or other arts contributing to its study. For more information, visit http://www.grahamfoundation.org.

Misty Urban, a Ph.D. candidate in medieval literature, won a first prize for fiction in the 21st annual New Letters Awards for Writers contest. Urban received the Alexander Cappon Fiction Award for her story, "Trying to Find a Corn Dog in Tompkins County." Winners will receive $1,500 and publication in the spring issue of New Letters magazine (http://www.newletters.org), published quarterly by the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Urban, who earned a Cornell M.F.A. in 2005, has previously won writing awards from The Atlantic Monthly and Writers at Work.