Check out the new issue of Omnium: The Undergraduate Research Journal at NCWU, released on August 15, 2022. Omnium collects written work by promising undergraduate scholars. As we emerge from more than two years of harrowing pandemic-related restrictions, we notice that our students, perhaps in an effort to rethink issues of universal values, empathy, and quality of life, have collectively turned to issues of animal welfare and protection in the past academic year, a prominent trend reflected in the latest issue of which more than a third is dedicated to animal life, explored from various disciplines’ perspectives. We invite our readers to enjoy and learn from the fifteen new essays collected here and also encourage teachers in any discipline to use them as models in their own courses. Please use attribution when you do so.
OUR MISSION. Omnium is a collaboration between the Writing Program and the Writing Center at NCWU, providing our undergraduate students with the opportunity to explore the major genres of academic writing, join in scholarly conversations, share their ideas, perform original research, and see their work published in a professional venue. Omnium also serves as a teaching resource for NCWU faculty—and faculty at other institutions—as the essays and research articles published here reflect the skill and knowledge of real students at various stages of their academic careers, from first-year composition essays to projects created in senior seminars and honors theses. The materials lend themselves well to in-class discussion, analysis, and emulation, and we hope that students will be energized when they realize that there is no single arcane secret to writing well. All it takes is practice, motivation, and direction.
Dr. Jim Bowers’s Fourth Monday Colloquium: “Let’s Talk about Grading”
Join us for the final Fourth Monday Colloquium of the Spring 2022 semester as Dr. Jim Bowers presents “Let’s Talk about Grading” in Powers Recital Hall on March 28, 2022, at 3:00 p.m.
Over a century of pedagogical research reveals that grades not only undermine learning and a genuine education, but many of our most valued goals as educators. We are therefore faced with the question of how we might best help students “be rewarded with deep, meaningful, and joyful learning,” to quote Susan D. Blum, an anthropologist and author of several works on higher education. Please join an open conversation on grading. In addition to reviewing Alfie Kohn’s scholarly summation of the harmful effects of grades in “From Degrading to De-Grading,” and discussing some of our own observations and struggles, we will examine the distinctions among training, schooling, and an education in the humanistic tradition. Finally, we will share pedagogical methods, strategies, and the resources we have adopted (or hope to adopt), along with those that other educators have found successful, to begin decentering or even replacing grades with more authentic, instructive, and meaningful forms of feedback and assessment.
Dr. Margaret Love’s Fourth Monday Colloquium: “Radical Canons: Epigraphs and Authority in Caribbean Fiction” on October 25, 2021, in Powers Auditorium
Join us for Dr. Margaret Love’s Fourth Monday Colloquium: “Radical Canons: Epigraphs and Authority in Caribbean Fiction” on October 25, 2021, in Powers Auditorium.
Why do authors use epigraphs? Do Caribbean and European authors use them in different ways? How might epigraphs be connected to our ideas about canonical literature? Dr. Love’s current book project reads the understudied device of the epigraph as a rhetorical tool used by Caribbean authors as a cultural reference point in crafting their literary identity. How does the use of epigraphs in Caribbean fiction shift over time and engage with a broader global literary community? Attend this lecture to find out!
Dr. Bill Grattan is Awarded Jefferson-Pilot Professorship
Dr. Bill Grattan has been awarded the 2021 Jefferson-Pilot Professorship, the highest honor North Carolina Wesleyan University bestows upon a faculty member to recognize their scholarship, teaching and, community service. Dr. Grattan will share his creative work at his upcoming Jefferson-Pilot presentation on October 19, 2021 on the Wesleyan campus.
Now in his 18th year at the college, Dr. Grattan will collaborate with seven friends in performing a table reading of scenes from Cousin Audrey, his new novel manuscript. Set during the fall of 1983, the novel focuses on five cousins from a working-class neighborhood of Pittsburgh at a time when the city’s major industry, steel, was in decline. While the two youngest cousins, Will and Jake, attend an out-of-state college, the next two oldest, Nick and Frank, struggle to find steady employment, with few prospects in a depressed economy. Audrey, the oldest of the five, and the cohesive force in the group, has been employed for 15 years as an administrative assistant at a downtown Pittsburgh law firm that, among other clients, represents U.S. Steel and Mellon Bank. Very close as children, the five cousins find themselves drifting apart and headed in different trajectories.
Please join us for the table read of Dr. Grattan’s new novel at 7:00 P.M. in the Powers Recital Hall, Dunn Center on Tuesday, October 19, 2021.