Awards & Appointments

Ellen Rainy Summer Brake was named Outstanding Senior among the 52 graduates receiving the BA degree at the Department of English graduation ceremony held May 4 in Hendrix Theater. Hannah Hollar Butler and Randy Bernard Marfield shared the Outstanding Graduate Student honor among the 32 graduates receiving the MA degree. All three students spoke at the ceremony and texts of their speeches are printed here.

In 2006 C.W. Sullivan III was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to conduct a seminar and perform research in Hungary in the spring of 2007.  He was unable to accept that award for personal reasons.  However, the Hungarian Fulbright Commission then chose to reserve the Fulbright for Sullivan for the spring of 2008 and recently notified him officially of the reinstatement of the award.  Sullivan has accepted the award and will teach a graduate seminar in Debrecen (east of Budapest), will lecture at other universities, and will research the Celtic invasions and settlements in the eastern and central European region.

Bridget Marie Todd, Olin C. Wilkinson, and Maggie Pepper Saia were named ECU's 2007 Outstanding Creative Writing Students by the Creative Writing faculty of the Department of English.  The writers were honored with a reading and reception on May 3 in Bate 1031.  Todd read her short story "Laughing" and the poem "Memories from Ibook."  Owen Wilkinson read two poems "Drive" and "Down South," and two short stories "My Dream" and "The Corner Stop."  Maggie Saia read two of her stories "Night Family" and "Marilyn's Favorite story" and her poem "For Me."

Bridget Todd was named the Russell Christman Scholar in 2006 and won first place prizes in both poetry and fiction for The Rebel, ECU's student literary magazine.  She has worked as an editorial intern for the North Carolina Literary Review and has been a staff writer for The East Carolinian and Expressions literary magazine. She also played "DJ Coleslaw" -- punk music director for WZMB. While at ECU, she has also served as president of the ECU Poetry Forum and treasurer of Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society.  This fall, Todd will begin work for the MA in English at the University of Maryland.

Olin C. Wilkinson has been head coach of the ECU women's rugby club team and a member of the Phi Alpha Tau History Honor Society, and Phi Kappa Phi.  Wilkinson served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1996-2000.  In 1999, he guarded refugees in Albania who were fleeing the conflict in Kosovo, and he later served as a peacekeeper in Kosovo.  He also worked in natural disaster relief in Turkey before his discharge.  A permanent resident of Greenville, Wilkinson joined the NC National Guard in 2003 and has served one tour in Iraq.  In the fall, Wilkinson will begin work on MAT degree at ECU, and he will continue coaching the women's rugby club.

Maggie Pepper Saia has been a volunteer for Project Sunshine and an undergraduate research assistant during her years at ECU.  After graduation, Saia will begin an internship in community building.