Instructors, please remember to save your best papers from winter term, and encourage your department to honor its best student writer with the 2011 WIC Culture of Writing Award in your discipline. Student winners receive $100―half of which is awarded by the WIC Program, and half from the department.
The name of the award is department-specific (i.e., the WIC Culture of Writing Award in Mathematics). Please note that the award can be given for any paper written in an undergraduate course in the department, not only WIC courses. In addition, for the first time last year, winning papers are included in the OSU Scholars Archive, the official OSU Libraries repository for scholarly work done at the university.
The deadline for submitting student writing for a WIC Culture of Writing Award is June 1, with no exceptions allowed. The financial transfer must be completed before a student graduates in Spring Term.
Several departments appoint selection committees for their writing awards. In Fisheries and Wildlife, for example, students in all courses with a major writing assignment are eligible for the WIC Culture of Writing Award. The department chair forwards the Culture of Writing Award announcement by e-mail to all faculty, and reminds instructors to save the best papers. The selection is made by a subcommittee appointed by the department’s Resident Instruction Committee, and the award is given at the Department Spring Fete, one day before graduation.
While several departments do not have any written, formal criteria for the award, Fisheries and Wildlife faculty consider three main areas: style and format, appropriate for a professional journal; content, integration, and critical thinking; and grammar.
Please encourage your department to participate in the WIC Culture of Writing Awards program, and contact WIC Director Vicki Tolar Burton at [email protected] if you intend to give an award in your discipline.