comments

Please give my thanks to all who participated in today’s celebration! It was incredible! I think that is one of the best ideas and execution of idea that I have seen in writing and presentation. I would love for this to become the standard! Congratulations!

Yesterday’s Celebration of Student Writing was outstanding. I have been a professor for 40 years and I have never seen that kind of enthusiasm expressed over a writing assignment in a required class. Having 240 students proudly display their work is a phenomenon. Beyond excellent teaching and organization, I suspect your approach of using an ethnographic study of a topic chosen by the students is a major factor in the success of this event.

As I walked around the Celebration of Writing yesterday I was amazed at the engagement of the students in their topics – most seem to have been related to their major, job, or where they liked to “hang out.” Great job - I haven’t seen that many students engaged in a project, ever!

I want to second Shannon Carter's enthusiastic praise for the teaching assistants and our first-year students, but I also want to heartily congratulate her for conceiving and orchestrating such a wonderful event. It was refreshing to see student work celebrated rather than complained about, and the students I talked to were able to speak with real authority about the work they did.

Well done, Shannon!

Please add my voice to the chorus of praise. The Celebration of Student Writing was outstanding. The students who participated were excited and eager to talk about their projects, and this event was a great venue for them to share their work with a live audience outside their classrooms.

Congratulations to Shannon and to all the instructors of Eng102.

I'm sorry that I missed out on something so outstanding. I'm very impressed with the comments you've pasted and with what I have heard from [others]. I'm so glad you got a strong turn out across campus [. . .].

Congratulations for a grand celebration and for making such a tremendous impression.

[. . .] Just wanted to say what a GREAT program that was yesterday! This morning I went and told Randy Jolly about it; he's our marketing professional responsible for the "passionate about learning" campaign. I told him, "Yesterday was a great example of passion in writing and learning and teaching," and he got really excited about it. He may be getting in touch with you because I really feel that some of our student's synopses would be good for KETR and the website, just promoting all the great things our students are doing.

I'm sorry I couldn't attend your event yesterday. From what I hear it was a great success and truly my loss.

After visiting with Rick Miller about your essay writers I'd like to visit with you.

One of my responsibilities is oversight of KETR. We've just hired a new GM, Bill Oliver, who is really doing a fine job of throwing open the doors of KETR to include the university. [. . .]

Bill and I are discussing possible new programming ideas for the near future and one idea we discussed was somehow incorporating your essayist either as a full blown program on KETR (al la Prairie Home Companion) or, more realistically in the short term, occasional special programming featuring what's going on around campus [. . .].

We haven't worked details yet but I thought it might be interesting to give some play to how your essayist come up with their topics, how they go about gathering information, how they structure their stories and, finally, have them or somebody actually read excerpts.

Unrelated, I saw there was an essay on the Heritage House. Since putting the Pride magazine together is another one of my duties I'd be interested in seeing a copy of that article for possible inclusion in an upcoming Pride magazine (it goes to 60,000 alumni).

On potential connections to the University Strategic Plan--

An email from Dr. Hendrix, then Associate Vice-President for Academic and Student Affairs, sent to to administrators around campus the week before the CSW (emphasis mine):
Too often, we focus on the problems we have and not on the good things…and then there is a ray of hope. The focus in the strategic plan on interdisciplinary instruction and what was learned from the System Federal Relations team on Friday make this event timely. Please see the titles and abstracts:
http://faculty.tamuc.edu/scarter/archive/csw_program.htm

[The CSW] was a special day for the university. Wyman was so excited about what he observed (as was I). :) We have been “partners in crime” for many years about the power of interdisciplinary instruction, and Wyman was the major force on the strategic plan committee in making sure this was a goal. Just think…when we look back into our history, it will be the CSW and your leadership that gave us the example of how it is done. Rick and Randy: Thank you for seeing the potential for promoting and marketing this event.

I just keep smiling when I think about CSW – the energy and enthusiasm generated from faculty and students about learning…What really gets me, is the second and third wave of conversations about the day. People are referencing “factoids” and the observations they picked up at the event. Shannon – this is so cool for you and your folks – please book the space early for next year so we can get it all in one place.

Rick Miller, Director of the Memorial Student Center

Three Weeks Later--

Your wonderful work helps all of us as we teach our respective courses. We appreciate you and all the English professors who contributed to this effort.

Mildred Golden Pryor, Management Professor

We welcome any additional comments. Please forward them to Shannon_Carter@tamuc.edu or send them ground mail to Shannon Carter, Department of Literature and Languages, Texas A&M-Commerce, PO Box 3011, Commerce, Texas, 75429-3011