Good Greef! Clark Wins Award!

Josie Clark received a 2010 Robert J. Greef Award as Missouri Western's outstanding BSE English graduate at this year's Write to Learn Conference for English educators held at Osage Beach, Friday, February 26. Josie was one of 12 recipients honored at a luncheon for the Greef winners. Each outstanding teacher education graduate also received a one-year membership in the Missouri Association for Teachers of English. Josie was selected because of her outstanding scholarship and service. She has been on the President's or Dean's list during her entire tenure at Western. She is a member of Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society and Kappa Delta Pi Education Honor Society and President of Western's Student Affiliate of the national Council of Teachers of English. She was Western's SNCTE 2008 and 2009 NCTE National Conference Delegate in San Antonio and Philadelphia. While at Western, Josie also worked as a workshop leader tutoring developmental writing students and as the literacy paraprofessional for Prairie Lands Writing Project. This semester, she is student teaching at St. Joseph Central High School.

Foster's Open Mic Draws More New Readers

Bill Church reports "Last night a record number of writers--twenty-three--took the mic at Foster's to celebrate New Lit Out Loud, the first reading of the new semester. Readings ranged from a high school poet and a first-time reader to a weathered community country song writer satirizing city politicians. The readings offered a tremendous variety of works: a fifteenth anniversary poem; a spoken word piece decrying the murder of a child; a short prose piece in which the married speaker recalled nearly joining the mile-high club with an imperfect stranger who "told me I had a beautiful mouth." If the applause was an accurate measure, the audience thought everyone who read, sang, or performed also had beautiful mouths--delivering words that celebrated our humanity."

Our next display of beautiful mouths will be Wednesday, March 10 at 7 PM at Foster's. Come share your writing.

Thanks to Jess Wilkinson for the pictures.

Jeanie Crain to publish book

Dr. Jeanie Crain, professor of English, has a textbook coming out in the fall of 2010 from Polity Press, an international publisher of social sciences and humanities books. Reading the Bible as Literature: An Introduction introduces students to the common tools of literary analysis while helping them understand the Bible as a literary text. The book seeks to return the Bible to the common reader and to build in that reader an appreciation fo a collection of ancient, literary texts.

Congratulations on a book of biblical proportions, Jeanie!

"Shhhh!" says Cindi Nicks, Librarian

Cynthia A. Nicks--the mother of two children (daughter Emily Auxier is also a MWSU graduate and teaches for the St. Joseph School District, and son Zebulon Auxier is currently a seminary student) is currently Medical Librarian for Heartland Health, belongs to the Health Science Library Network Consortia, and is the current President for the Friends of Rolling Hills Library.

Drop Cindi a line at cindi.nicks@yahoo.com

Spanish Pays Big for Alumnus

Jason Buss reports that "if you're wondering if learning Spanish is worth all the work--I can tell you it definitely is!" Jason finds that his ability to speak fluent spanish has been a great asset in his work in Human Resources. Jason speaks spanish daily with his HR counterparts all over Latin America. "This education combined with my BS in Business Administration . . . has allowed me to work and help people all over the world."

Chalk it up as yet another satisfied foreign language student in a global economy.

So where is Aimee Pike these days?

Living under the name "Aimee Wilson" and teaching in the Buchanan County R-IV school district, that's where. Aimee reports getting married to a mysterious Mr. Wilson, also a Griffon, and having a son, Collin. After taking teacher certification classes at some university up the road whose name escapes me (they wear green, I seem to remember), she took a job teaching Communication Arts and is in her 5th year teaching. She teaches 7th- and 8th-graders English and Mass Media and reports "loving every bit of it."

Catch up with Aimee at ajp0120@yahoo.com.

Open Mic Resumes in 2010

The next open mic reading will be at Fosters Martini Bar on Wednesday, February 3 from 7-9 PM. Come with your prose (fiction and non) and poetry (written before or after you get there).

See you there.