High School Writing Day Draws Area Students to “Fight for Your Writes”

On Thursday, March 5, 2020, the Prairie Lands Writing Project hosted High School Writing Day, an annual gathering of students for a morning of writing activities and workshops with an open mic reading held after lunch. This year, 125 students from ten area schools attended, accompanied by fourteen high school teachers. PLWP Co-Director and the EML department’s  Dual Credit Liaison, Amy Miller, coordinated the event.  Poet t.l.Sanders, a PLWP Teacher Consultant and spoken word performer (Frontier Schools, KC) served as emcee. Opening session speakers included MWSU’s President, Dr. Matt Wilson, as well as Dr. Bill Church and PLWP Director Dr. Susan Martens.

Workshop sessions for the students, led by MWSU faculty members and area high school teachers, ranged in topics from poetry and fiction to zine-writing, journalism, and technical communication. Our workshop leaders this year were Ms. Jenny Jackson, Dr. Bill Church, Ms. Alyssa Striplin, Ms. Vickey Meyer, Dr. Kaye Adkins, Dr. Janice Cools Stephens, Mr. Meredith Katchen, Ms. Misty Burright, Mr. Daniel Gilden, Ms. Kelly Lock-McMillen, and Dr. James Carviou.

MWSU English majors also assisted with the event by serving as campus guides, assisting the emcee, and supporting student readers at the Open Mic. Volunteers this year were  English education majors Al’Eysha Byrd, Tommy Stewart, Toni Cooper, and Aaron Siefers who were joined by Creative Writing and Publishing majors Matthew Ball, Leila Collins, Anne Davies, Rachael Drenckpohl, and Gwen Lock.

Prairie Lands Writing Project Teacher Consultants Present Workshops

Prairie Lands Writing Project Teacher Consultants Present Workshops and Assist with Scholastic Writing Awards Ceremony at Write to Learn Conference

Several PLWP Teacher Consultants presented workshop sessions at Missouri’s annual conference for English teachers, Write to Learn, held at the Tan Tar A Conference Center in Osage Beach on Feb. 27-29.  Presenters included Diane Mora (Central High School, KC), Kelly Lock-McMillen (MWSU), Blake Thorne (Grain Valley), Rachel Daniels (Lathrop), and Amanda Collier (Buchanan Co. R-IV). 

Assisting with the conference’s Scholastic Writing Awards Ceremony for Missouri high school students was PLWP Director, Dr. Susan Martens, Co-Directors Josie Clark and Elisabeth Alkier (Bode Middle School, SJSD), and Elizabeth Hoskins (Bode Middle School).

Co-directors Clark, Alkier, and Hoskins

Tiffany Rice Receives the Robert J. Greef Award

Congratulations to Tiffany Rice, MWSU's recipient of the Robert J. Greef Award for Outstanding 

English Education Graduates. Tiffany was honored on Feb. 28 by the Missouri Council of Teachers of English at the Write to Learn Conference, which she attended with her mother, Carol Rice, and one of her professors, Dr. Susan Martens.

Tiffany grew up in Smithville, Missouri. The daughter of Adam and Carol Rice, she graduated from Smithville High School, then graduated cum laude from Missouri Western State University this past December. She was a volunteer at the Prairie Lands Writing Project’s annual High School Writing Day where she assisted high school students attending writing workshops on campus. She served as a workshop leader in MWSU’s developmental writing program and supported young writers in a blogging partnership with Bode Middle School in Saint Joseph. She is currently substitute teaching and planning for graduate coursework this summer with the Prairie Lands Writing Project while she prepares to seek a fulltime high school ELA position for the coming school year.

Alumna Lisa Crawford is Promoted

Alumna Lisa Crawford, ’10, was promoted Jan. 29, 2020, to the rank of sergeant in the Nebraska Army National Guard where she serves as a mass communications public affairs specialist in the 111th Public Affairs Detachment, in Lincoln, Nebraska. Crawford enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2014, attended Basic Combat Training at Fort Jackson, S.C. and went on to the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Maryland to earn her military occupational specialty.
Since July 2016, she has worked full-time for the Nebraska National Guard’s State Public Affairs Office as a public affairs specialist. In 2017 she supported Hurricane Irma relief operations in Florida and was named National Guard Bureau’s Outstanding New Writer. In March 2019, she helped manage and provide public affairs support for the rescue response, relief and recovery operations following historic flooding across Nebraska, resulting in multiple video and print products being shared across every major national news outlets.

Nikki Groom Publishes Poem, Prepares to Become Tiger

Student Nikki Groom has published her poem "What My Mother Doesn't Know" in the Tulane Review, the publication of the Tulane University Literary Society.

 

Speaking of Louisiana, Nikki will be transferring to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA to finish her undergraduate studies.

 

Congratulations on both, Nikki. Show them what a Griffon can do among LSU Tigers!

 

 

Faculty News

Dr. Marianne Kunkel’s book, Hillary, Made Up (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), was a finalist for the University of Central Arkansas’ Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award.

 

Dr. Stacia Bensyl presented a paper at the Japan Studies Association conference in January titled “Amazing Grace: Humanity in Endo Sushaku’s The Samurai.”

Alumnus and Retired Faculty Member Ken Rosenauer a New Publisher

Photo credit St. Joseph News-Press

Alumni Ken and son Brent Rosenauer are the new publishers and editors of The Savannah Reporter. Read all about their plans for the newspaper in the St. Joseph News-Press. 

Congratulations and Good Luck, Ken!