The 2005 Hoefer Prizes are given each year at Stanford to a select group of undergraduates who have shown singular excellence in their writing abilities. Prizes may be awarded in all areas of the undergraduate curriculum: humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. A faculty selection committee judges the papers according to criteria appropriate for the field and such general criteria such as clarity, focus, organization, argumentation and style. The Hoefer Prizes are made via generous gifts by the Hoefer Foundation.
For 2005, four undergraduates were awarded the Hoefer Prize. The winners included Tatiana Catanzarite, Anna Cueni, Jared Kaplan and of course, Laura Surma.
Laura was awarded the prize for her paper "Green Dorm Project Proposal". Her instructor for this project was Martin Fischer of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The prize was awarded at the Gold Room of the Faculty Club at Stanford. Martin gave a long speech introducing Laura and outlining the reasons why her paper exceeded all expectation.
The paper is written in a proposal format. Its purpose is to explain the reasoning why Stanford should build a "Green Dorm". A Green Dorm is an environmentally conscious building used to introduce new, and often experimental sustainable building techniques to students living within the walls of the dorm and to a much wider audience across the campus and to the City of Palo Alto. The $11.62 million dollar and 20000 square foot project has been funded and will be built in 2006, at least partially justified by Laura's proposal.