Award-Winning Educators — Our English Department has a long and distinguished history of preparing future public school teachers and administrators. Once such former student is Tisha Greene, who received both her BA in English and her MA in English Education from our department. She is currently the principal of the Oakhurst STEAM Academy, and she has just received the 2017 Outstanding Administrator Award from the North Carolina Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Center. The news of this award comes just a year after Bobbie Cavnar, another of our former graduate students, was named the North Carolina Teacher of the Year. For more information about Tisha Greene’s award, please click on the the following link: http://inside.uncc.edu/news-features/2017-05-17/university-alumna-cms-principal-named-outstanding-administrator
Meghan Barnes, our incoming assistant professor in English Education, has also just received a major award for teaching. The University of Georgia, where Meghan has just completed her Ph.D., presented her with their 2017 Graduate School Excellence in Teaching Award. She received the award on April 17, 2017, at their Faculty Recognition Banquet. I am proud of Meghan for receiving this award, and I am very pleased that she will be joining our English Department in the fall.
Kudos — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of our department. Here is the latest news:
Paula Eckard recently presented a paper titled “Thomas Wolfe, Hurricane Katrina, and Lost Children in Southern Literature” at the Thomas Wolfe Conference in Indianapolis.
Sara Eudy, a new student in our MA program, was recently awarded the William C. Johnson Distinguished Scholarship from Sigma Tau Delta. The writing sample she submitted was based on the honors thesis she wrote under Kirk Melnikoff’s direction last semester.
Sarah Minslow recently published a chapter titled “The Diary of a Young Girl and Children’s Literature of Atrocity in Critical Insights: The Diary of a Young Girl, co-edited by Pnina Rosenberg and Ruth Amir. Sarah also recently gave an invited lecture titled “The Holocaust and Genocide Today” to the 7th grade at Kannapolis Middle School.
Jen Munroe was an invited participant at the Folger Shakespeare Library’s EMMO (Early Modern Manuscripts Online) conference (May 17-19, 2017) in Washington, DC, where she presented a talk titled, “EMROC (Early Modern Recipes Online Collective): Connecting Research Communities, Connected Classrooms.” She was also an invited speaker at the UNC Charlotte Faculty Sustainability Workshop last week (May 16) and gave a talk titled “Teaching Sustainability and Humanities.”
Alan Rauch presented a paper titled “Italian Boys: The Figurinai of Italy and London” at the North American Victorian Studies Association Conference held in Florence, Italy.
Quirky Quiz Question — Tisha Greene is the principal of the Oakhurst STEAM Academy. What does STEAM stand for in this context?
Last week’s answer: Will Shortz
Margaret Farrer was the first New York Times crossword editor. Does anybody know the name of the paper’s current crossword editor?