Classical Studies Students Win National Quiz Bowl

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Jacob Purcell, Virginia Huff and Tiffany Montgomery, members of the winning University of Arkansas Eta Sigma Phi team.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Three University of Arkansas undergraduate students in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences won the 2012 national Certamen quiz bowl in Columbia, Mo.

The Certamen is a Greek and Roman rapid response competition held at the annual national convention of Eta Sigma Phi, a classical studies honorary society. Eta Sigma Phi has more than 200 chapters on college campuses across the nation that strive to promote interest in classical studies and help foster fraternal relationships among students. The University of Arkansas chapter was founded in 1950, and the current advisers are professors Dave Fredrick and Daniel Levine.

“Dr. Fredrick and I are very proud of these students, and of the local chapter as a whole,” Levine said. “Our students have been very active in promoting the group’s activities while maintaining a high level of scholarship in Greek and Latin.”

Questions at the Certamen competition cover topics ranging across Greek and Roman geography, language, literature and archaeology. The University of Arkansas team used questions from previous Certamens to study for the 2012 competition.

“On the five-hour drive to the competition, we took turns answering past Certamen questions so that we would familiarize ourselves with question structure and topics,” said team member and Honors College student Tiffany Montgomery, a junior classical studies major and president of the university’s Eta Sigma Phi chapter. “We have such a well prepared and tight knit group of students in the classics department, it really was great to work as a group and come out victorious. It was an absolute honor to win the Certamen.”

The other two members of the team were junior Virginia Huff and sophomore Honors College student Jacob Purcell. Each of them received a copy of the Oxford Classical Dictionary — a “quite pricey encyclopedia that will come in handy for future papers,” according to Montgomery — for their victory. This is the third time a team from the University of Arkansas has won the national Certamen. The other two wins came in 1998 and 2003.