In the latest installment of the “Good News” series, the Ball State English Department highlights the accomplishments of our faculty and students. 

Lynne Stallings, EnglishBSU media’s article “Parents learning English benefit from class offered by Ball State, Muncie Schools” is based on a partnership between BSU ESL licensure students in Prof. Lynn Stalling‘s Methods and Practicum courses and the Muncie Community Schools. The ELL (English Language Learner) program has been offered to Muncie students for several years, and is now expanded to caregivers who want to learn supplemental English and need an introduction to the American school system.

Elisabeth Buck and Nikki Litherland Baker successfully defended their dissertations!

Drs. Carolyn MacKay and Frank Trechsel published “Hacia una reconstrución del proto-totonaco-tepehua” in the collection Investigaciones (inter)disciplinarias en lingüística.

Prof. Angela Jackson-Brown was interviewed on The Art of the Matter with Travis DiNicola to discuss her play, ANNA’S WINGS. Her play is a part of the 2016 DivaFest at Indyfringe in Indianapolis, IN. Jackson-Brown also hosted a Sneak Peak Cocktail Party for all of the Divas of Divafest at Indy Reads Books.
In addition, Jackson-Brown presented a workshop  entitled “Why Did They Do That: Learning to Ask the Right Questions of our Characters” at the 2016 Gathering of Writers, sponsored by the Indiana Writers Center.

Undergraduate Lauren Cross has been awarded the Senate’s Gudal Memorial Scholarship. She currently works as a Legislative Intern for State Senators Lonnie Randolph and Greg Taylor.

Dr. Adam Beach presented a paper entitled, “Torture, Trauma, and Slaves Who Love Their Masters” at the annual meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies in Pittsburgh, PA.

Prof. Eva Grouling Snider has been awarded a 2016 Provost Immersive Learning Grant for her project “Holistic Communications for the 21st Century,” also titled Jacket Copy Creative. Students will manage the public communications of Whitely Community Council and the Ball State English Department. Students in the project will work together to produce promotional materials, manage social media, maintain websites, edit blogs, and conduct focus groups. They’ll gain experience in editing/publishing, content marketing, public relations, graphic design, web development, strategic communications, and social media management. For more information, visit our blog post.

Profs. Lynne Stallings, Carolyn Dowling, and Dave Largent were awarded a 2016 Provost Immersive Learning Grant for their project “Developing SED (Science, Education, and Diversity) Modules”. The focus will be to expose students of diverse backgrounds to STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art Math) by developing activity templates and modules for students at a local middle school and after-school program. The modules will incorporate science experiences, while allowing students to effectively communicate about those experiences. It will be offered as an HONR390 colloquium course in the fall.

Dr. Rai Peterson and Prof. Sarojini Jha Johnson have been awarded a joint Virginia Ball Center Fellowship for the 2016-17 school year. Rai, Sarojini, and their students will be working in the cross-disciplinary field of book arts to develop a Book Arts Collaborative in downtown Muncie, Indiana. It will house community programs and a proposed Ball State interdisciplinary minor in book arts that encourages cross-collaboration between students and community members.

BSU alumnus JD Mitchell has been accepted into the University of Louisville College of Business Entrepreneurship MBA program.

Two #bsuenglish students, Luke Bell and Sara Huber, have been selected as recipients of the university-wide Academic Honors in Writing award for the 2015-2016 year.

#bsuenglish senior Darren Sible was nominated for IACTE Outstanding Future Educator award. He is invited to attend a reception later this month with nominees from other universities from across the state. Congratulations!

Dr. Joyce Huff was interviewed by NPR for their broadcast, “‘You Cannot Shame Me’: Two New Books Tear Down ‘Fat Girl’ Stereotypes”.

Dr. Jackie Grutsch Mckinney was a keynote speaker at the 2016 Northeast Writing Center Conference in New Hampshire. She presented “Connecting the Dots of Writing Center Labor Stories” at their largest conference to date.

Dr. Lyn Jones presented “Keeping and Creating Peace: The Alliance of Black Teachers Club” at the Benjamin V. Cohen Peace Conference: Peace in Troubled Times. In addition, her essay “I Want To Write For Regular People” was featured in Permission: The International Interdisciplinary Impact of Laurel Richardson’s Work.

Prof. Emily Scalzo published a poem, “Higher Education Held Hostage” in New Verse News. Her poem “Duplicity, Or Why I Will Not Support Hillary for 2016” is available at Blue Collar Review and will be in the print edition.

Dr. Susanna Benko’s article, “Instruction matters: Secondary English preservice teachers’ implementation of cognitively demanding writing tasks,” will be published in April’s edition of English Education, a journal sponsored by the National Council for Teachers of English.

Along with colleagues Dr. Emily Hodge and Dr. Serena Salloum, Dr. Benko will also present two papers at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Washington DC later this month. Those papers are:

  • “Policy into practice: Investigating state-endorsed writing resources for the Common Core State Standards”
  • “Common Core connections: A social network analysis of state-level instructional resources for English/language art”

Dr. Elisabeth Buck has accepted a tenure track position as Assistant Professor and Director of the Reading and Writing Center at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Congratulations!

Prof. Craig O’Hara‘s short story “The Laundry District” has been published by Foundling Review.

Prof. Beth Dalton was awarded the 2015-2016 C. Warren Vander Hill Award for Distinguished Teaching in Honors Education.

Dr. Molly Ferguson presented at a “Feminist Pedagogies” roundtable at the Northeast MLA conference (NEMLA) on March 19th. Her talk was titled, “Strategies to Foster Collaborative Knowledge-Making in an Interactive Learning Space Classroom.” In addition, the journal Studi Irlandesi accepted her article for a special issue on “Resistance Ireland,” to be published in June 2017.

Prof. Michael Begnal‘s poem “Homage to Séamus Ennis” was published in the Salmon Poetry anthology titled Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry. The anthology was launched at the AWP Conference at the end of March.

Dr. Laura Romano presented “A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Interviewing: Using Ethnography to Teach Disciplinary Skills” at the Moore Symposium on Excellence in Teaching, at IUPUI. Romano also presented “The ‘Microlecture’: Creation and Cultivation of the Student Voice” at the College English Association’s annual conference in Denver, Colorado.