Every year, we give four awards for excellence in tutoring. We always have great nominees in every category, and the decisions are difficult to make. Each nominated tutor submits one or more recorded tutoring sessions plus a written reflection on how those sessions demonstrate best tutoring practice. These are reviewed each year by award committees comprised of current experienced tutors, to whom we owe special thanks for their service.
Congratulations to the 2020-21 award winners:
The Jim and Judi Herbert Endowment Award for Excellence as a New Undergraduate Tutor: Joanna Martin
Joanna’s sessions show how she offers each student positive, encouraging feedback and uses those moments reflect on the student’s writing choices, creating a time for students to share their thoughts about the direction a paper needs to take. By adopting this practice, Joanna fosters dialogue and gives students the opportunity to see the areas in which they succeed (or are more knowledgeable on a topic than they realize) and helps them feel empowered to continue with their writing process. Joanna is continuing to work in the JAHWC this year.
The Jim and Judi Herbert Endowment Award for Excellence as an Experienced Undergraduate Tutor: Lauren Sprout
Lauren seeks to build rapport with each student with whom she works. She always makes recommendations for resources and strategies for writing that will benefit students beyond the session. She engages in a holistic practice of providing global support for students as writers beyond the single assignment or class they are working on, and she adapted her practices mindfully during the COVID-19 year to provide students with needed individual and emotional support. Lauren graduated in May and is now in graduate school.
The John C. Hodges Award for Excellence as a New Graduate Student Tutor (given to a first-year English MA or MFA tutor): Maggie Hess
In both her tutoring sessions and reflective commentary about her work, Maggie demonstrates best practices for tutoring, but more than that, adapts them to specific situations by being both prepared and flexible. Most notably, she displays a particular kind of sensitivity, creating a space in which students feel comfortable talking about their writing and themselves while completing their projects. Maggie handles all tutoring moments with grace and skill, exemplifying what it means to be a careful, thoughtful, and student-oriented tutor. She is now a second-year MA student and continues to work in the JAHWC this year.
John C. Hodges Award for Excellence as an Experienced Tutor (given to a Graduate Teaching Associate or Lecturer tutor): Coralyn Nottingham
Coralyn’s finely-tuned expertise means she is always right on top of the key questions to ask students. She is a tutor who can glide through rhetorical minefields effortlessly and make it appear almost easy. She always is quickly able to identify key issues and help students work through potential solutions and always helps students develop a sense of what to work on to revise and improve their work. Her reflections upon her work thoughtfully consider how she would approach tutoring differently in future sessions—demonstrating that effective teaching is always an active and evolving art. Dr. Nottingham continues to work in the JAHWC this year.