Thursday, January 28, 2016

Congratulations to Shauna Wight, graduate of the UNH Ph.D. program in English (2015)!  

Dr. Shauna Wight has won the prestigious 2016 James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC).  This is the highest award for dissertations in Composition. Every year, there are a high number of outstanding submissions from Ph.D. programs in Composition-Rhetoric throughout the country.  Shauna Wight’s dissertation, ‘Upward Bound is College Bound’: Pre-College Outreach Programs’ Sponsorship of Academic Writing, was chosen as the best in this highly selective competition.  She will be honored for this achievement at the CCCC Convention in Houston, Texas on April 8, 2016.

Shauna graduated from UNH in May 2015, and she is now an Assistant Professor at Southeast Missouri State University.  Her dissertation committee included Christina Ortmeier-Hooper (chair), Cristy Beemer, Alecia Magnifico, Tom Newkirk, and Jessica Early (ASU). This is the second Berlin Award that has been received by a UNH Ph.D. student in the past eight years.  Katherine Tirabassi (’08), an advisee of Tom Newkirk, won the award for her dissertation in 2008.  More information about the Berlin Award can be found at: http://www.ncte.org/cccc/awards/berlin