From the Chair

Although my comments for this column traditionally discuss events or issues relevant for faculty, I thought that I would depart from that orientation this month and discuss the activities of two of our students.

Rainey Brake, a senior who is already taking graduate-level courses as a non-degree student, has had a paper selected for publication in Explorations, a new journal being published by the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium (SNURCS).  Rainey will actually be presenting the paper at the Symposium to be held Saturday, November 18 at North Carolina State University, prior to its publication in the journal.  Intended to "showcase" outstanding undergraduate research conducted at North Carolina's 53 private and state colleges and universities, as well as its 58 community colleges, the symposium this year features research projects in six areas of study, with a majority of the projects falling under the heading "Science."

Rainey's paper, "Socioacupunture in Practice: A Critical Look at Leslie Marmon Silko's Gardens in the Dunes," was originally written for Ellen Arnold's ENGL 6350 course "Studies in Native American Literature."  Rainey's abstract of the paper states that "socioacupuncture is an invasive technique of reinterpreting literature, specifically American Indian literature that has been mistranslated and mal-interpreted in a post-colonial literary scene."  By approaching Native American literature from this new perspective, Rainey seeks to demonstrate that post-colonial literature may more easily be placed into a meaningful relationship with the traditional literary canon.

Another of our English majors, sophomore Lace Wayman, has recently received word that she has been selected to participate in the University of North Carolina's "UNC in Washington" program.  This program, which is open to students from all UNC institutions, enables students to spend one semester in Washington, D.C., where they participate in a seminar directed by a UNC faculty member and engage in an internship with an array of government institutions and programs. In addition, Lace also plans to take two courses which our department is offering this spring via Distance Education.

I hope that Rainey and Lace will be followed by other of our undergraduate majors who choose to participate in University of North Carolina system-wide programs.  Faculty should be aware of such programs and encourage outstanding students to pursue the opportunities available.