Awards & Appointments

Congratulations to Gregg Hecimovich who received the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor Award for 2006 and the Scholar-Teacher Award for 2006.  Hecimovich was recognized for his "creative student projects, illustrated paper grading, and extensive use of digital resources such as podcasting and streaming audio."  The recognition is accompanied by a $1,000 cash award.

Congratulations to Catherine Smith and Donna Kain who served as principal investigators for a funded interdisciplinary study "Storm-related Risk and Emergency Communication in the Coastal Zone."  The succesful grant was awarded approximately $36,000 to study communication as a factor of hurricane preparation and response in eastern North Carolina.  According to the grant abstract: "[The] study will examine the ways that public authorities and residents in coastal regions receive, attend to, interpret, and use a range of official and unofficial information to make decisions about risks related to hurricanes and tropical storms.  Questions we will address include: What information do authorities and residents in risk-prone areas have about the risks prior to and during hurricanes or tropical storms?  What are their sources of information, and how do they rate those sources?  What communication factors influence perception of and response to the risks?  How does regional emergency communication infrastructure influence perception and response?  How do social networks and local norms influence reception and interpretation of emergency information, perceptions of risk, and decisions about actions?  To address these questions, we will investigate communication practices and products associated with documentation networks (DNs) of response agency information (e.g., local, city, state, national government agencies), and socio-spatial knowledge networks (SSKNs) of community information (e.g., workplace, school, neighborhood, business, family sites of information exchange)."  Kain and Smith worked with other faculty members from Communication and Geography. The grant has been jointly funded by ECU's Research and Graduate Studies Division, the NC Coastal Maritime Council, and the Natural Hazards Research Center.

Congratulations to Lida Cope who has been awarded a Harriot College Research Award for the Spring of 2007 to complete her study: "Language Development in Kindergartners: Dual Language Immersion in a Rural Community."  Also, congratulations to Thomas Herron who received a Harriot Research Award for his study "Editing Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland' (ca. 1883) by Sir John Pope Hennessy."

Congratulations to Brent Henze who has been recently appointed to the Research Network of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW).

The Department of English recognized several members of the faculty for their contributions to the value and integrity of the program. The 2005-2006 Fearing Teaching Award was awarded to to Luke Whisnant and Barri Piner; and the Departmental Service Award was given to Tom Shields and Joanne Dunn.  Congratulations to all!