NCSE congratulates the winners of Alliance for Science's second essay contest, announced on May 17, 2008. Alliance for Science -- a non-profit organization which seeks "to heighten public understanding and support for science and to preserve the distinctions between science and religion in the public sphere" -- invited high school students to write essays on either agriculture and evolution or climate and evolution. The Alliance's contest director, Dick Lessard, said, "We were impressed by how seriously the top students took this contest. They probed beyond the obvious and their essays reflected a genuine appreciation for how a detailed understanding of science can help inform public policy debates."

The winning entry was submitted by Neal Desai, a high school sophomore in Kansas City, Missouri, whose essay was entitled "The Crossroads: Agriculture and Evolution"; he received a prize of $300, while his teacher Kathy Ketchum received a variety of books and DVDs as well as $150 toward classroom supplies. Desai's prize essay, as well as three other prize-winning essays from the contest, are now posted in PDF form at Alliance for Science's website. And Alliance for Science also announced the topic for its next essay contest: "In Darwin's Footsteps," chosen, of course, for the bicentennial of Darwin's birth and the sesquicentennial of the publication of the Origin of Species.