English Department Writing Program Prize
We are excited to congratulate this year’s first-year writing prize winners. The EDWP award selection committee, made up of ten instructors, labored over the decisions. All of the nominated essays – the winners as well as the more than forty runners up – demonstrated highly successful first-year writing, but these winning essays clearly transcend their counterparts, showing just what our students are capable of achieving. As these essays show, college students can write, and write well. This is something worth celebrating – especially in contrast to common remarks about the “literacy crisis” made popular over 35 years ago by Newsweek’s 1975 cover story, “Why Johnny Can’t Write.” As first-year writing instructors know quite well, a sense of panic continues to surround the perceived decline of literacy among students: they “don’t read as much as they used to,” and when they do, it’s “never the right books.” Texting and email, such rhetoric suggests, are making an already bad situation worse. This collection of award-winning essays provides an important counterbalance to such pervasive, and destructive, conversations. In fact, written excellence extends far beyond the essays published in this collection: it exists in all first-year writing classrooms and is there to be recognized, acknowledged, and celebrated with more than a letter grade or departmental prize. 14 Excellence in First-Year Writing 2011