Monday, May 1, 2017

EML Board Report

EML Board Report—March and April

Kaye Adkins
Students in the Technical Documentation course completed a project for the Pony Express Museum. The project included digitizing, editing, and cataloging 700 slides of the Pony Express Trail; creating documentation to support the project; and using the images to create multimedia projects to accompany current Museum exhibits. With the materials created by the students, the Pony Express Museum staff will be able to locate images in their collection to use in future publications and exhibits. With the documentation created by the students, Museum staff and volunteers will be able to digitize, edit, and catalog slides to add to the collection. The course is taught by Dr. Kaye Adkins.

Dana Andrews
Dana Andrews attended the College Composition and Communications Conference (4C’s) in Portland, Oregon from March 15-18.  He attended sessions on ESL and International Student Composition.

Liz Canon
Liz Canon’s article, "Blurred Lines: Does Religious Polarity Create Problematic Heroes in the Poem, Beowulf?", was accepted for publication by Interdisciplinary Humanities, the journal of the Humanities Education and Research Association. It will appear in their spring volume.

Bill Church
Dr. Bill Church, in cooperation with the St. Joseph Museum, has published In Their Own Words: An Oral History of African Americans in St. Joseph Missouri.  The book grew out of a summer PORTAL grant that provided an Applied Learning opportunity for Missouri Western students Jeremy Lyons, Ashley Snyder, and Alexis Mosley. An abridged version of the filmed interviews is available for viewing on the Museum web site. The book is available for purchase now, and the Museum is planning a public reception.

Marianne Kunkel
Dr. Marianne Kunkel organized a campus-wide poetry reading featuring the acclaimed writer Nikki Giovanni. The event, titled "The Mochila Review Presents: In the Shadow of Nikki Giovanni," took place on April 6 at 7 p.m. in Potter Hall Theatre. Co-organizers comprised her Mochila staff and donors comprised the President's and Provost's Offices, the EML department, the CME, and the St. Joseph Public Library.

Susan Martens
On March 2, the Prairie Lands Writing Project hosted High School Writing Day, an event which brought approximately 200 area high school students and teachers to MWSU for a day of writing workshops, lunch activities, and an open mic reading.  PLWP Co-Director and EML Instructor Amy Miller coordinated this event, while PLWP Teacher Consultant Terrance Sanders (Frontier STEM High School, KC) served as emcee.  Several MWSU faculty members and PLWP Teacher Consultants led workshops, while secondary English education students served as event volunteers.  PLWP would like to thank all of the MWSU faculty, staff, and students who contributed their time and energy to making this annual event so successful.
In March, the Prairie Lands Writing Project was awarded a $15,000 Supporting Effective Educator Development grant through the National Writing Project to support its Invitational Summer Institute program.  PLWP Director Susan Martens and Co-Director Amy Miller authored the grant proposal

Susan Martens gave a presentation titled "Leveraging the Writing Marathon for Community Connections" at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Portland, Oregon, on March 18.  

Miguel Rivera-Taupier
Last month, Miguel Rivera-Taupier published his article "Aspectos goticos y policiales de Estrella Distante" in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 94.2.

Dawn Terrick
On April 13, 2017, Dawn Terrick presented her paper, “Show Me How To Live: The Role of the Mother and Father in Monster/Horror Genre from Frankenstein to Dexter,” at the 47th Annual Popular Culture Association (PCA) Conference in San Diego, California.
On Wednesday, April 19, 2017, Dawn Terrick, Director of Developmental Writing (ENG100), held a reception to honor those students whose essays were chosen to be in cluded in the 11th edition of the ENG100 student publication Discovering the Student, Discovering the Self.  Students were in attendance to receive their awards and read from their published works.  The student essays reflect the struggle and the joy, the hard work and the rewards that these students have experienced both in their lives and in the classroom.  After the reading, students reconnected with their ENG100 Instructors and introduced their family and friends to their professors.  Faculty, staff, students, friends, and family were in attendance to enjoy the reading, food and camaraderie and conversation that carried over into the afternoon.





Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Students of French enjoy a six-course dinner


30 students in French and their guests enjoyed a traditional French meal on the evening of November 16 in the President's Dining Room. This yearly event provides a wonderful opportunity for current and prospective students of French to mingle and share a wonderful culinary experience.
 
The six-course menu included cake aux olives, gougères (the real cheese puffs made from scratch with gruyère cheese), foie gras (goose liver pâté), grated carrot salad with a lemon and garlic vinaigrette, coq au vin (chicken stew), salade verte with a vinaigrette, assortment of fromages français with bread, followed by desserts, including clafoutis (cherries baked in batter), mousse au chocolat and rochers à la noix de coco (coconut macaroons). 
The dinner party included a poetry reading between courses. 
 
Merci to all those who prepared food and entertained!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thursday, September 29, 2016

20th Annual Reading of Banned and Challenged Books



Last night we celebrated our 20th annual reading of banned and challenged books on Missouri Western's campus. Readers included EML and Prarie Lands alums Stacia Studer and Elisabeth Alkier as well as assistant professor Elizabeth Canon.



Dr. Canon
Readers & Books
Ms. Julie Perez, MWSU Education student
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

Dr. Elizabeth Canon, Assistant Professor of English, MWSU
I Corinthians, chapter 13 from the Tyndale Bible
 
Ms. Sally Gibson, Director, MWSU Library
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Ms. Chris Danford, School Board Member, SJSD. 
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Mr. Ken Newton, Columnist, St. Joseph News-Press  
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ms. Elisabeth Alkier, Prairie Lands Writing Project, MWSU 
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury  
Ms. Alkier
Dr. Ben Caldwell, Dean of Graduate Studies, MWSU
The Da Vinci Code  by Dan Brown

Ms. Stacia Studer, St. Joseph School District Teacher of the Year 2015-16
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Ms. Studer


Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Eight successfully defend in Modern Languages

The spring of 2016 semester saw an impressive number of students defending a thesis. A total of eight students presented their thesis in Modern Languages, seven in Spanish and one in French. With topics ranging from the challenges of democracy in contemporary Honduras, to absurdism in Albert Camus’ work, to critical gender theory applied to a Spanish novel, these students demonstrated their language skills, as well as their knowledge of the target cultures. We wish the new graduates the best of luck in their future endeavors, wherever it may take them. 

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Polished Portfolios


This semester, three technical communication majors completed a Senior Portfolio. All three of them scored "Polished," the highest possible rating, on their portfolios. Two of the students received perfect scores from one of the evaluators.  Congratulations go to:  Dante Lammoglia, Garrett Skribina and Tinsley Underwood.  We are EML proud!

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Honoring outstanding students

On April 19th, we celebrated the accomplishments of students in English and Modern Languages.  Students earning academic honors were presented with an academic key. The outstanding graduates were introduced by faculty and received a commemorative plaque.  Words cannot express how much we appreciate the contributions of these students or how proud we are, but the pictures below can. You will find the names of these outstanding graduates on plaques in the department display case:        
                     

BA English, Garrett Skrbina
 BSE English, Krystal Hicok

BA Spanish, Connie  Devault
  BA French, Elizabeth Young
 


MAA, Roxanne Chase
Academic key awardees: Connie DeVault, Cydney Puckett,
Cami Pendleton, Mariam Riddle, Krystal Hicok, Garrett Skrbina.
Not pictured: Nicole Bradley, Sara Brown, Erica Cook,
Morgan Rathmann, Taylor McGrath, Gage Williams.







Celebrated author Ellen Hopkins visits Missouri Western


On April 18th, the well-known young adult author Ellen Hopkins visited Missouri Western in conjunction with the Mochila Review’s MoRe prize, for which Hopkins was judge.  The popular writer’s meeting with high school students was followed by an evening reading in which Hopkins shared selections from poetry and the novel Crank. Marianne Kunkel coordinated the events.