During the academic year of 2007-08, the English department has focused on reaching out in service
activity.
University Outreach. Betsy Birmingham and Gary Totten, both associate professors of
English, have taken the lead in our department on issues related to gender and race issues on campus. Betsy
has been focusing on gender-equity issues, while working as a member of NDSU FORWARD to collect and share
institutional data concerning campus climate and its relation to issues of recruiting, retaining, and
promoting women in the faculty ranks. Gary has been working with TOCAR, a group that addresses
institutional racism. In conjunction with Multicultural Student Services, Melissa Vosen, a graduate
student, participated in campus wide readings of Martin Luther King Jr.'s work in January.
Linda Fricker, senior lecturer, is a faculty fellow for Dinan Hall in the Faculty in Residence Education
(FIRE) and Maureen Scott, lecturer, is a First Year Experience (FYE) faculty mentor in Weible Hall. FIRE
and FYE are programs sponsored by Residence Life to encourage faculty/student interaction outside of the
classroom.
Local Outreach. Many members of the English department have extended their efforts in
service and outreach to the community.
Andrew Mara, assistant professor of English, hosted a literacy summit in the city. His ENGL-275
Introduction to Writing students gathered people and organizations to formulate and discuss future
directions for providing literacy services in the Fargo-Moorhead area. His English 320 Business and
Professional Writing class got into the community spirit by creating and presenting marketing plan
proposals for the Fargo
Theatre Executive Director Margie Bailly.
Dale Sullivan, department head, has been working with people in the community to build a local foods
network. Learn more at http://fargolocalfoods.net.
Amy Rupiper Taggart, assistant professor of English, continues her campaign to promote service writing
cooperative projects in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Her Literacy, Culture, and Identity students mentored
Andrew Mara's students as they prepared for the second Literacy Summit, collected oral histories for the
National Writing Project, and mentored youth in CHARISM's "Giving Youth a Voice" writing project.
Kristina Caton, a graduate student, worked with the English Language Learners (EEL) from the Fargo Public
Schools in a cooperative writing project that brought NDSU writing students together with New Americans.
This project culminated in visits by the ELL students to two universities (NDSU and VCSU) to read from
"Journeys: Writing Partnerships Across Cultures," a book comprised of the collaborative writing exchanges
between the NDSU students and the ELL students.
Cindy Nichols, senior lecturer, revived Poetry on Wheels, a joint project of NDSU English and the
Fargo/Moorhead MAT bus system. Maureen Scott, lecturer has collaborated with NDSU's Volunteer Network and
FirstLink to provide service project documents for local and regional not-for-profit agencies.
Regional Outreach. In September, English hosted the Linguistic Circle of Manitoba and
North Dakota. The conference theme, memory and memorial, drew approximately 60 presenters from the Red
River Valley Region and from farther flung locations-British Columbia, Toronto, New Hampshire, New York,
San Francisco, Louisiana, Missouri, Colorado-to name a few.
Cindy Nichols, senior lecturer, and Maureen Scott, lecturer, have been active in the ND Humanities
Council's "North Dakota Reads" program, in which university instructors travel across the state to
facilitate community book discussions. Her most recent visits include Oakes, Mayville, Cooperstown, and
Dickinson.
The Red River Graduate Student Conference has extended its reach this year by increasing the number of
included schools from one (NDSU) five years ago to thirteen regional schools this year. The conference is a
great way for new scholars in the fields of education, English, women's studies and communications to
convene in a graduate student friendly atmosphere and develop and hone their emerging scholarship
skills.
International Outreach. Students in Bruce Maylath's ENGL-320 Business & Professional
Writing and ENGL-321 Writing in the Technical Professions are matched with students in Europe studying
translation. In the fall semester, students in ENGL-320 composed a set of instructions for a North American
audience, then reworked the text so that it would be easier for a translator to use. (Writers can take
certain steps in English, such as eliminating idioms, to help the translator render a text accurately in
another language.) They then communicated by e-mail with students at Gent Hogeschool (Ghent College of
Translation and Interpretation) in Belgium to have their texts translated into Dutch. This spring students
in ENGL-321 are composing procedures, which will then be translated into Italian by students majoring in
translation studies at Università degli Studi di Trieste, in Italy.
Kevin Brooks, associate professor, is part a local group working on a documentary film and humanitarian
project called African Soul, American Heart. The film will document the life of Sudanese refugee,
Joseph Akol Makeer, and his efforts to build an orphanage for the 16,000 orphans in his home county of Duk,
southern Sudan, even as he finishes his degree at NDSU, cares for siblings, and raises his own family. The
documentary is scheduled to be finished by fall 2008; fundraising efforts will follow. Please visit the
project website to see a short video and learn more: africansoulamericanheart.org.
Amy Rupiper Taggart was part of an international delegation to attend the China-US Literacy Conference in
Beijing, China. The conference was developed to foster cross-cultural pedagogical understanding and to
build partnerships for future collaboration.
This summer, Miriam Mara travels to Limerick, Ireland to work on an articulation agreement with the
University of Limerick in Irish Literature and technical communication.
Finally, next fall, Dale Sullivan will spend the semester in Aarhus Denmark teaching graduate classes in
the rhetoric of science and exploring ways for the two universities to work together.