Stephen Nelson, Tariq Thachil, Karrie Koesel and Samantha Majic, all Ph.D. '09 from the graduate field of government, have earned top prizes for their dissertations from the American Political Science Association (APSA). The achievements put Cornell's graduate program in government on two parallel winning streaks, only one of which has been matched in the history of the awards.

Nelson, now a College Fellow at Northwestern University, is the recipient of APSA's 2010 Helen Dwight Reid Award for his dissertation titled "Creating Credibility: The International Monetary Fund and the Neoliberal Revolution in the Developing World."

Nelson is the third Cornell student to win the award in the last four years; a distinction matched only once in the award's 44-year history (by Harvard, whose students won three times between 1991 and 1994).

At Cornell, Nelson also earned the Kahin Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, along with several teaching awards.

Tariq Thachil, currently a postdoctoral associate at Yale, was awarded APSA's 2010 Gabriel A. Almond Prize for his dissertation titled "The Saffron Wave Meets the Silent Revolution: Why the Poor Vote for Hindu Nationalism in India."

Thatchil is the second Cornell grad to earn the Almond Prize in the last four years, making Cornell's the only government graduate program from which students earned the Reid and Almond awards in the same year twice. (The first time was in 2007.)

Koesel, currently assistant professor of political science at the University of Oregon, received the Aaron Wildavsky Award from APSA's politics and religion section for her dissertation "Belief in Authoritarianism, Religious Revivals and the Local State in Russia and China."

Majic, now an assistant professor of political science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, won the Women and Politics Section Best Dissertation Award for her dissertation "Protest by Other Means? Sex Workers, Social Movement Evolution, and the Political Possibilities of Nonprofit Service Provision."

The multiple successes are particularly notable considering the small size of Cornell's graduate program, said Christopher Way, director of graduate studies and associate professor of government. "It just goes to prove what I tell prospective students: the chief virtue of our program is the fabulous graduate students who create such a collegial environment and do such superb work," he said.

The American Political Science Association awards the Helen Dwight Reid Prize annually by for the best dissertation in international relations, law and politics; and the Gabriel A. Almond prize for the best dissertation in comparative politics. Both awards include a prize of $750.