From the Chair

I am pleased to report that the department has continued its growth, both in terms of the numbers of undergraduate and graduate students, and in terms of the number of faculty.  Rick Taylor, Director of Undergraduate Studies, has informed me that the number of undergraduate majors this year has once again been over the 200 mark, a milestone first reached last year.  At the graduate level, Janice Tovey, who took over from Jim Holte as Director of Graduate Studies in English, welcomed the third "class" of students to our doctoral program.  Students from the first group of doctoral students, who were admitted in fall 2004, are preparing to take their qualifying examinations this spring, preparatory to writing their dissertations in the coming academic year.  With luck, the department will see its first doctoral graduate during the spring or summer of 2008.  At the graduate level, the department's highly successful online program leading to an MA in English with a concentration in Technical and Professional Composition was joined by an online post-baccalaureate certificate in Multicultural Literature.  Faculty in that concentration are now planning to augment the certificate program by also instituting an online version of the MA in English with a concentration in Multicultural Literature.

Once again, the department welcomes a number of new tenure-track faculty. Ranks and areas of specialization for those who have already accepted positions for the 2007-08 academic year are as follows: Associate Professor Michael Albers (Technical and Professional Communication) and Assistant Professors Anna Froula (Film Studies), Marame Gueye (African and African Diasopric Literature), Su-ching Huang (Asian American Literature), Amanda Klein (Film Studies), and Anne Mallory (British Romantic Literature).  Searches are still underway for faculty in Technical and Professional Communication, Irish Studies/Literature, and Creative Writing (two positions).  I hope that all members of the department will extend our new colleagues a warm welcome and will assist them in finding suitable housing or otherwise helping to relocate them to Greenville.

Faculty research productivity continues to be impressive; this past year faculty produced three single-authored books/monographs and two edited volumes.  They published thirty refereed journals articles and twelve essays or book chapters, as well as numerous short stories, poems, book reviews, abstracts, and proceedings articles. These scholarly efforts were accompanied by formal recognitions of excellence. Will Banks, for example, received the Ellen Nold Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication for outstanding editing of a special issue of the journal Computers and Composition. Brent Henze won the National Council of Teachers of English Award for the best article on the history of science writing and three faculty, Patrick Bizzaro, Joyce Middleton, and Resa Bizzaro, contributed essays to an edited collection that won the Nancy Dasher Award for outstanding book from the Ohio College English Association.

Other faculty receiving awards or honors include C.W. Sullivan III, who received a lifetime achievement award from the Children's Folklore section of the American Folklore Society, and Gregg Hecimovich, who was named a recipient not only of an ECU 2005-06 Teacher-Scholar Award, but also a UNC 2005-06 Board of Governors Distinguished Professor for Teaching Award.  More recently, the Department has been honored with awards for faculty leadership: Reginald Watson received the first ECU Centennial Award for Leadership and Margaret Bauer was named one of ECU's "10 Women of Distinction."  Spring is in the air.