CEDAR FALLS - Grant Rozeboom, of Amana, a senior philosophy major and honors student at the University of Northern Iowa, won first prize at the recent Undergraduate Philosophy Conference at Dartmouth College.

Rozeboom's winning paper, "Freedom Beyond Restraint: An Arendtian Critique of the Liberal Tradition," has already been published in Aporia, Dartmouth's undergraduate philosophy journal. Rozeboom's paper focuses on political philosophy, and specifically, the traditional definitions of political freedom. He says that he constructively criticizes these definitions using the work of Hanna Ardendt, a 20th century political theorist and philosopher.

The conference, which is unique for being entirely student-run, drew submissions from as far away as Edinburgh, Scotland. However, Rozeboom was one of only two students from public universities on the conference's program. Both the conference and the journal, Aporia, are "very prestigious," according to Betty DeBerg, UNI professor and head of the Department of Philosophy and Religion.

Rozeboom's advisor is William Clohesy, UNI professor of philosophy and "a master teacher and mentor for philosophy students at UNI for 20 years," according to DeBerg.