Photo courtesy of the MSU College of Arts & Letters.
Michigan State University has been named one of three recipients of the 2017 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Student Affiliate Excellence Award. Founded in 2012, the award honors NCTE student affiliates that meet high standards of performance. This is the first time the MSU student affiliate has won this award.
“The award is significant because it shows we are doing the right things to reassert our English teacher education program,” said MSU Associate Professor Emery Petchauer, faculty advisor for the student organization. Petchauer has a joint appointment in the Colleges of Education and Arts and Letters. “The award also shows our students how all of the work they do as English education majors on campus is directly connected to the larger profession and field. It’s not separate. They are already part of a global network of language, literacy and literature educators.”
To win this award, MSU had to fulfill at least eight different criteria for excellent affiliate programming from July 1 of the previous year through June 30 of the current year.
“Our student affiliate group excelled at breaking down some of the barriers that often keep English educators from learning from one another,” Petchauer said. “The events they held connected our group to English teachers in the state and also allowed underclassmen to learn from our students who are graduating and on the cusp of entering the profession.
“The group also did an incredible job of making their events speak out to the wider public through live tweeting and other digital means. The students were successful at making sure the energy and learning from their events were not limited to a four-walled room or even campus.”
Petchauer also gives credit to student mentoring from English education faculty with helping bring this award to fruition. He gave special recognition to April Baker-Bell, assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Culture, and Jennifer VanDerHeide, assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education, who have supported students to present at the NCTE annual conference.
“These mentoring efforts planted the seeds for the successes that grew this year,” Petchauer said.
The MSU student affiliate—which was led this past academic year by president and College of Education student Natalie Parenti—will receive the award at the 2017 NCTE Annual Convention in St. Louis, Mo., during the Affiliate Roundtable Breakfast on Sunday, Nov. 19. MSU has a history with NCTE; in 2016, several MSU College of Education students, alumni and facultya presented at the conference.
The current members of the group include students in both the College of Education and the College of Arts and Letters:
- Natalie Parenti, president
- Lauren Hallett, vice president
- Rachel Tuller, current treasurer and incoming president
- Harry Totten, secretary
- Katie Cox, liaison officer
- Caileigh Grant
- Devin Simoncic
- Kelsey Wiley
- Sarah Welc
- Korrine Wesson
- Amber Litwiller
- Marissa Weil
- Kathryn Stegeman
- Dylan Grant
- Dionysia Kefallinos
This post originally appeared on the College of Arts and Letters website.