FSU history alum (and current American Historical Association president) Vicki Ruiz is among the recipients of the 2014 National Humanities Medal, the White House announced on Friday. Her National Endowment for the Humanities profile opens with this anecdote: "As a transfer student at Florida State University in the mid 1970s, Vicki Ruiz did not think she’d be on the vanguard of creating the field of Chicana/Chicano studies in the United States. She just wanted to be a school teacher, a career her mother always encouraged her to pursue. So when Jean Gould Bryant, then an assistant professor in history, asked Ruiz if she’d ever considered graduate school, Ruiz demurred. “I said, ‘Hmm, graduate school. That’s for rich people. That’s for smart people. I’m neither,’” Ruiz says. But Bryant convinced her that she was smart enough and could get a fellowship." May we continue to do this work. Congratulations, Professor Ruiz!