Four graduating seniors were awarded this year’s Louis B. Sudler Prize, which recognizes outstanding achievement in the performing and creative arts, including fine arts, music, creative writing, theatre, and electronic/photographic arts.
The 2026 Louis B. Sudler Prize recipients are:
- Ally Doederlein
- Trevor Sullivan
- Keir Thomas
- Aaron Young
Presented each year by the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University, recipients of the Louis B. Sudler Prize must be members of the senior graduating class and demonstrate outstanding achievement in the performing or creative arts and show promise for future achievement.
The 2026 recipients will be recognized during the College of Arts & Letters commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 3, at the Breslin Student Events Center.
Ally Doederlein
Ally Doederlein is graduating in Spring 2026 with a BFA in Stage Management from the Department of Theatre and a BA in Management from the Broad College of Business, while also completing a minor in Arts and Cultural Management. She also is graduating from the College of Arts & Letters’ Citizen Scholars program and is among the first two students to have completed the Undergraduate Certificate in Reflective Leadership in the Arts & Humanities, which is a brand-new certification offered by the Citizen Scholars program.
During her time at MSU, Doederlein has contributed to more than 16 productions and events across campus, taking on roles that include production stage manager, assistant stage manager, show caller, deck manager, assistant musical director, and assistant to the composer. Her work extends beyond the Department of Theatre as well as she has collaborated with MSU Opera Theatre, Wharton Center for the Performing Arts, Orchesis Dance Company, Breslin Student Events Center, and on large-scale corporate events.
Doederlein also has built a record of professional experience, including a stage management internship at The Naples Players in Naples, Florida, where she led her first full musical; an assistant stage management role on Jersey Boys at Great Lakes Center for the Arts in Petoskey, Michigan; and a paid position stage managing MSU Opera’s production of The Grapes of Wrath. She also stage managed Recorded in Front of a Live Studio Audience, a sitcom-style collaboration between MSU’s Department of Theatre and School of Journalism.
“Stage managers do not take bows or receive applause for their performances. However, for her outstanding achievements as an artist and for her remarkable career to come, Ms. Doederlein truly deserves the recognition of the College of Arts & Letters with the Louis B. Sudler Prize for the Arts.”
Ann Folino White, Associate Professor
“She is adaptable, unflappable, and calmly adjusts to the quick-pace, high-stakes environment,” stated Tina Newhauser, Senior Academic Specialist in the Department of Theatre, in her nomination letter. “She thinks on her feet and helps to problem solve before many have noticed there may be a concern. I can state with 100% certainty that Ms. Doederlein will have a meaningful career in the performing arts.”
Ann Folino White, Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre, also nominated Doederlein.
“Stage managers do not take bows or receive applause for their performances,” Folino White said. “However, for her outstanding achievements as an artist and for her remarkable career to come, Ms. Doederlein truly deserves the recognition of the College of Arts & Letters with the Louis B. Sudler Prize for the Arts.”
Doederlein plans to work this summer for the Santa Fe Opera, a premier opera company in New Mexico. Then in the fall she plans to move to New York City to continue pursuing a career in theatre. “While there are a variety of avenues for me to pursue in the future, they are all rooted in my arts education,” Doederlein said. “My arts education at Michigan State University has, without a doubt, prepared me to excel in my future, in both personal and professional fulfillment.”
Trevor Sullivan
Trevor Sullivan is graduating in Spring 2026 with a B.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from the Department of English and three minors in Screenwriting, Linguistics, and Business.
At the center of his undergraduate work is Borne to Die, a full-length dystopian novel manuscript he developed across three courses and an independent study. The manuscript has drawn interest from a literary agent at one of the top agencies in the country, who requested the complete draft after reading early chapters. A sample from the manuscript won first place in MSU’s highly competitive undergraduate creative writing prize for fiction in 2024 and earned him the Platt-Ruble & Athanason Award in 2025.
Beyond the novel, Sullivan has written a feature-length film adaptation, an original 60-minute pilot episode, and, through his Linguistics minor, constructed an entirely new language, complete with a mock Wikipedia entry.
“I rank Trevor Sullivan amongst the top 0.1% of the over 9,000 students I taught in a career spanning 15 years and three state universities. I can envision his manuscript becoming a published book in the near future.”
Shastri Akella, Assistant Professor
Sullivan was a member of the prose team for the Red Cedar Review, MSU’s national literary magazine, where his collaboration impressed one of the faculty members who nominated him for the Sudler Prize.
“Trevor was very much at the center of the work the prose team did, where he demonstrated a graceful collaborative style that relied on patience and playfulness even as it was anchored in careful reading and guided by mature aesthetic sensibilities,” said Tim Conrad, Assistant Professor in the Department of English.
When a visiting fiction writer with extensive publishing experience came to Conrad’s editing and publishing course, Sullivan arranged a follow-up Zoom conversation to learn more about the Denver Publishing Institute, a program he has since been accepted to.
“I rank Trevor Sullivan amongst the top 0.1% of the over 9,000 students I taught in a career spanning 15 years and three state universities,” said Shastri Akella, who worked with Sullivan across three courses including an independent study. “I can envision his manuscript becoming a published book in the near future.”
In his personal statement, Sullivan reflects on what his arts education has meant to him. “My classes didn’t make me create art,” he wrote, “but rather enabled me to create art. I have learned the art of exercising creativity to its potential.”
Keir Thomas
Keir Thomas is graduating in Spring 2026 with a BFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Painting from the Department of Art, Art History, and Design. However, he began his undergraduate education majoring in Special Education as he was drawn to questions of language, communication, and how people make meaning. Those early years in classrooms shaped by linguistic diversity and non-verbal communication, he wrote in his artist statement, “formed the foundation of my artistic framework.” After changing his major to Studio Art, he brought that same curiosity to painting and hasn’t looked back.
Thomas’s recent work centers on abstraction as a vehicle for emotional and social experience. In his Advanced Painting class in Fall 2025, he developed a body of work that drew directly on his life as a young African American man, incorporating materials from the late-night restaurant where he worked, embedding charcoal grill residue into canvas, freezing and melting acrylic paint, and responding to the results with large gestural marks.
The resulting series, including works titled GRILL and GREASE, transforms the rhythm of physical labor into paintings that, as Thomas described, “oscillate between chaos and calm.”
“In total, Keir Thomas’s work ethic, artistic vision, and development of critically informed artistic processes is among the very best I have witnessed in my 30+-year career at MSU.”
Thomas Berding, Professor
Thomas’ commitment to the studio extends far beyond class hours: his output, according to his nominators, has literally spilled into the hallways of MSU’s Kresge Art Center.
“The combination of Keir’s persistence, conceptual framing of his process, and ability to find distilled poetic gestures is exceedingly rare, especially among undergraduates,” said Thomas Berding, Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Deign, who nominated Thomas for the Sudler Prize. “In total, Keir Thomas’s work ethic, artistic vision, and development of critically informed artistic processes is among the very best I have witnessed in my 30+-year career at MSU.”
Thomas is the leading candidate for the Ralph Henrickson Award, presented by MSU’s Department of Art, Art History, and Design each spring to the top graduating senior concentrating in painting. He also has been accepted to four graduate MFA programs, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
As he looks ahead to graduate school and a career as a professional artist, Thomas describes his ambitions in clear terms.
“Art,” he said, “has prepared me to lead, to teach, and to build rigorous visual systems rooted in lived experience.”
Aaron Young
Aaron Young is graduating in Spring 2026 with a B.A. in Film Studies and a B.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Fiction Filmmaking, a two-year program focused on independent film production. All these programs are offered through the Department of English.
Over the course of his undergraduate education, Young has worked across nearly every dimension of filmmaking, serving as writer, director, editor, composer, and collaborator on projects ranging from experimental documentary to feature-length screenplays.
His short films have reached audiences beyond campus: The Skin of the Space Cadet was accepted by the Ann Arbor Film Festival’s New Voices Program and WEAVINGS screened at the Flint Youth Film Festival at the Flint Institute of Arts. His screenplay, A Small Object, earned the Laurence Allen Tate Scholarship in 2023. His short film, Paper Anniversary, drew praise for its restraint and visual intelligence.
“As good as he is at imagining and bringing to life his own ideas in writing and film production, Aaron’s real creative superpower is his willingness to embrace the ideas and collaborate on the work of others.”
Jeff Wray, Professor
In his senior capstone, Young served as one of three writers and a key production crew member on Fault, a 30-minute narrative drama his cohort is producing for a public premiere in Spring 2026.
“As good as he is at imagining and bringing to life his own ideas in writing and film production, Aaron’s real creative superpower is his willingness to embrace the ideas and collaborate on the work of others,” said Jeffrey C. Wray, Timnick Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Film Studies in the Department of English, who nominated Young for the Sudler Prize. “He has been an exceptional student, a real credit to our broad film program. Most importantly, he is held in the highest regard by his fellow students and peers.
Young currently is working on Soft Landings, a novel blending new adult fiction, comedy, and magical realism, as well as Docile Apes, a feature-length science fiction screenplay.
In his artist statement, he describes his evolving relationship to creative invention: “I view art as a declaration of our humanity in the face of intense inhumanity.”
