Announcing the Winner of the 2018-2019 Outstanding Writing Instruction Award
Columbus, OH -- The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Program proudly announces the winner of the 2018-2019 Outstanding Writing Instruction Award: Jacqueline K. Kauza, a graduate student in the Department of English. This annual award recognizes a Graduate Teaching Associate who teaches writing in an innovative fashion: helping students overcome learning challenges, connecting writing to significant disciplinary concepts, and improving teaching based on assessment and feedback. Kauza will receive a $200 award and a certificate of achievement. In addition to her monetary prize, Kauza will participate in an episode of the WAC podcast--Write.Think.Teach.--to discuss how she uses a series of scaffolded assignments to teach her students audience awareness and multimodal approaches to composing.
Kauza showed incredible dedication to making her course responsive to student challenges through her emphasis on practice and attention to audience awareness. The committee was particularly impressed by the strong alignment of Kauza’s teaching philosophy with her course design and her innovative episode analysis project. In particular, within her Museum Exhibit assignment, Kauza invited her students to adapt their content to respond to the different expectations of children and adults, which exemplified her creative and intentional teaching of the rhetorical situation. Overall, the committee was taken with her thoughtful scaffolding of the writing process and incorporation of multimodal approaches.
The committee also awarded two Honorable Mentions:
Ju-A Hwang (Department of Teaching and Learning) inspired the committee by how she helps her students “develop their scholarly voices as skilled second language writers.” Hwang’s teaching philosophy embodies the practices of reading and writing transfer, and she demonstrates it through the reading journal assignment that she created in response to students’ needs. It is clear that she has dedicated time to developing resources and meaningful feedback to your students. Overall, the committee was impressed with the ways Hwang drew on her own struggles and successes as an international student writer to empower her students’ sense of agency.
Caroline Toy (Department of Comparative Studies) showcased her expeditionary approach to the teaching of writing. The award committee could tell that Toy is extremely dedicated to her students and to trying new pedagogical approaches in order to show students the variety of ways they can engage with and respond to texts. The fanworks final project demonstrated her commitment to tapping into the interest of students and ability to incorporate multimodal approaches. Overall, the committee was impressed with how clearly Toy values student engagement and fosters space for students’ creative expression of their learning.
Sponsored by the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) student organization, the award was adjudicated by committee of WAC graduate consultants. WAC is based in OSU's Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing and provides research-driven support for the teaching of writing throughout the university. For more information about WAC's workshops, consultations, and other services, contact Dr. Christopher Manion at manion.12@osu.edu or (614) 292-9650.
