WAC Awards Recipients: 2025

Combined Logos of the WAC Clearinghouse and AWAC The Association for Writing Across the Curriculum and the WAC Clearinghouse sponsor awards that recognize contributions to the WAC community through scholarship, service, and achievement. Nominations are solicited prior to each International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, and awards winners are announced at the conference.

The following awardees were recognized at the Seventeenth International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference in July 2025.

Publication Awards

These awards recognize significant contributions to WAC scholarship in 2023, 2024, or 2025.

Best WAC Monograph

This award recognizes an authored book (including books by multiple authors) that makes an exceptional contribution to WAC scholarship, including (but not limited to) WAC programming, administration, pedagogy, and impact.

Laura Wilder, University at Albany, SUNY: Tracing the Impact of First-Year Writing: Identity, Process, and Transfer at a Public University

Comments from the Selection Committee: This fascinating examination of the impact and implications of first-year writing instruction at a large, public university synthesizes WAC scholarship with rigorous insights from a longitudinal, qualitative study of students’ experiences with academic writing. Wilder’s thoughtful study design and analysis of students’ experience, many of whom are first-generation college students juggling competing demands, demonstrates not only the lasting impacts of first-year writing courses but also the importance of first-year writing as a site of WAC research. In this work, Wilder examines how and when required first-year writing courses have a lasting impact on students’ writing and college success, considering important institutional and social factors that influence writing development, such as class size and students’ confidence and mindset.

This monograph makes important contributions to WAC scholarship through its specific analysis of the ways in which first-year writing courses contribute to students’ successes and failures in other writing-intensive courses and subsequent experiences with writing. Critically, Wilder pays close attention to considerations of labor for first-year writing instructors and how austerity and overworking can impact such instruction. Finally, we felt that the monograph’s exploration of students’ intersectional identities and theories of writing self-efficacy were noteworthy for future research in the field.

The book is available from Utah State University Press.

Best WAC Edited Collection

This award recognizes an edited collection that makes an exceptional contribution to WAC scholarship, including (but not limited to) WAC programming, administration, pedagogy, and impact.

Bojana Petrić and Montserrat Castelló (Eds.): The Thesis Writing Journeys of Bachelor’s and Master’s Students: A Transnational Perspective

Comments from the Selection Committee: This edited collection represents a thorough exploration of relevant and compelling WAC work, namely: the experiences of graduate students writing high-stakes theses and dissertations. The collection considers a variety of different disciplinary perspectives and experiences and is a rich and well-developed exploration of the writing practices of students across many disciplines. The collection demonstrates thoughtful integration and application of genre studies and linguistics to the topic of thesis writing and is methodologically robust. By providing a European perspective on the nuances and complexities of thesis-writing processes and the graduate student writing experience, this collection fills a critical gap in current WAC scholarship. This is also a cohesive edited collection.

The book is available from Multilingual Matters.

Outstanding WAC Dissertation

This award recognizes a dissertation that makes an exceptional contribution to WAC scholarship, including (but not limited to) WAC programming, administration, pedagogy, and impact.

Michelle Bianco, Liberty University: A Causal-Comparative Study of the Writing Motivational Constructs of Students with and without Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Online College Composition Courses

Comments from the Selection Committee: Michelle Bianco’s dissertation is a quantitative, non-experimental, causal-comparative examination of motivation students with ADHD experience in online writing courses. The selection committee commends Dr. Bianco for her grounding in WAC and composition studies history. The project demonstrates deep knowledge of and valuing of the field’s history and scholarship, with one committee member describing it as an exemplar literature review that they would share with their doctoral students as a model. Another committee member shared that they will approach teaching online courses differently as a result of reading Dr. Bianco’s dissertation. A Causal-Comparative Study of the Writing Motivational Constructs of Students includes rigorous methods, a comprehensive theoretical framework and study design that carry significant implications for writing program administrators and faculty.

View the dissertation at the Scholars Crossing: The Institutional Repository of Liberty University.

Best WAC Article or Chapter Focused on Research

This award recognizes a research-based article or chapter that makes an exceptional contribution to WAC. Nominated work should primarily offer the methodology and results of a research study, even if the findings have programmatic, theoretical, or pragmatic implications.

Anne Ellen Geller, St. John's University, and Neal Lerner, Northeastern University: “A Citation Analysis of The WAC Journal, 1989-2022”

Comments from the Selection Committee: Anne Ellen Geller and Neal Lerner’s article presents a citation analysis of the first 30 years of The WAC Journal, focusing on the type and content of cited texts, citation dynamics, and the ethnic and gender profile of cited authors. This research strategy enables a form of data-driven disciplinary meta-reflection, revealing the preferences and dynamics of how consensual knowledge is constructed and negotiated.

Geller and Lerner found that only 4 percent of citations are repeated three or more times, which suggests a fragmented field and, as one selection committee member noted, one with little “aggregate knowledge” and a less systematic role for research and the review of previous findings. Importantly, results show that among the most cited texts, most authors are white men in retirement or retired—paradoxically, the authors of the article share some of these characteristics, as they rightly acknowledge in their positionality statement. As Geller and Lerner argue, these results reflect a field that is not very diverse and lacks dynamism in the construction and discussion of knowledge.

The selection committee found that Geller and Lerner’s writing is well-supported, critical, and engaging to read. The article’s significance lies in prompting reflection on how knowledge is collectively built in WAC, with the goal of achieving greater diversity and intellectual dynamism.

View the article in The WAC Journal.

Best WAC Article or Chapter Focused on Pedagogy, Theory, or Practice

This award recognizes an article or chapter that makes an exceptional contribution to WAC scholarship in the areas of pedagogy, theory or practice. Nominated work should primarily offer us theoretical ways of approaching WAC work, discussions of program design and operation, or insights regarding pedagogy, even if this work is based in research.

Crystal Fodrey , University of Louisville: “The Future of WAC is Multimodal and Transfer-Supporting”

Comments from the Selection Committee: In her article, Dr. Fodrey engages extensively with WAC literature to demonstrate how multimodal composing can support student writing transfer across disciplines and foster more equitable and inclusive learning environments. The article exhibits sound pedagogical practice, grounded in WAC scholarship, to offer a fresh perspective on the ongoing challenge of writing transfer. Fodrey’s argument facilitates reader engagement, inviting further work on multimodality and transfer within WAC.

View the article in The WAC Journal.

Honorable Mention: Joanna Wolfe, Carnegie Mellon University: “What Educational Psychology Can Teach Us about Providing Feedback to Black Students: A Critique of Asao Inoue’s Antiracist Assessment Practices and an Agenda for Future Research”

Wolfe argues compellingly for revisionist antiracist assessment practices in writing studies, with clear implications for WAC. Educational psychology is presented as an alternative framework for providing more meaningful feedback to Black students and achieving more equitable feedback practices more broadly. Meticulously researched, the article inspires new ways of thinking about antiracist pedagogies, particularly as DEI initiatives in public institutions face increasing scrutiny.

View the article in College Composition and Communication.

Achievement Awards

These awards recognize contributions to the field of WAC through scholarship, service, or achievement.

Early Career Contributions to the Field

This award recognizes early career scholars (i.e. graduate students and scholars in the first nine years of their academic career) who have made significant contributions to the field of WAC through scholarship or service.

Mandy Olejnik, Miami University (Ohio)

Comments from the Selection Committee: Only a few years post-PhD, Dr. Olejnik has established an impressive body of scholarship that reinforces core WAC values, as with her edited collection highlighting voices of faculty across the disciplines; confronts overlooked areas of need, such as supporting graduate faculty as teachers of writing; and tackles immediately pressing challenges, such as integrating artificial intelligence, on which she is actively publishing while also developing teaching resources in her capacity as Assistant WAC Director at Miami University of Ohio’s Howe Center for Writing Excellence. Likewise, Olejnik’s leadership within the field spans her graduate and post-graduate career, in AWAC as well as the Ohio College Teaching Consortium. Olejnik’s early career contributions are considerable, dynamic, forward-thinking, and a testament to her potential, drive, and steadfast commitment to the field of WAC.

Outstanding Contributions to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Field

This award recognizes scholars who have promoted diversity and inclusion in the field of WAC through scholarship and service.

Kerri Flinchbaugh, East Carolina University

Comments from the Selection Committee: Dr. Flinchbaugh's pedagogical practices and policies have a clear connection to WAC with outstanding contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field, including programmatic events/workshops that focused on linguistic justice, critical language awareness, and trauma-informed/equity-centered writing pedagogies. Flinchbaugh’s work training faculty from across campus led to the development of more inclusive writing resources (like the Linguistic Justice Tool Kit) and contributed to a more equity-minded academic culture. The committee very much appreciated learning about these outstanding contributions to the field.

Honorable Mention: Saurabh Anand, University of Georgia

Comments from the Selection Committee: Saurabh Anand’s writing center work and commitment to principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion demonstrate contributions to WAC that are anti-racist and decolonial in focus. With a research agenda that is global in scope, Anand’s work showcases impressive reach beyond his institution and demonstrates great promise to make positive contributions to the field.

Distinguished Fellows of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum

This award recognizes distinguished scholars (i.e., scholars in field for at least 15 years) who have made significant contributions to the field of WAC through scholarship, service, and achievement. This is an award that continues beyond the year in which it was made. You can view the full list of Distinguished Fellow on the Distinguished Fellows page.

Ann Blakeslee
Eastern Michigan University
Selected 2025

Dr. Ann Blakeslee has produced an impressive record of program building and scholarly work. At Eastern Michigan University, she founded and led a WAC program that has been in operation for more than two decades and includes intensive annual institutes, a WAC speaker series, a book group, discussion groups for WAC faculty, and K-12 WAC outreach to local school districts. She also transformed the university’s writing center into a WAC-based center and developed strong connections between the WAC program and the larger Ypsilanti community through the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and YpsiWrites, a community writing resource she co-founded that offers workshops and writing support to members of the Ypsilanti community.

As a WAC scholar, Dr. Blakeslee has made significant contributions to our understanding of WAC through articles in journals such as Language and Learning Across the Disciplines, Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, and Technical Communication Quarterly, as well as chapters in edited collections such as Writing Beyond the University: Preparing Lifelong Learners for Lifewide Writing and her monograph Interacting with Audiences: Social Influences on the Production of Scientific Writing. This body of work demonstrates an engaged scholar who has advanced our understanding of writing in the disciplines, WAC/writing center connections, WAC in K-12 schools, and writing in the community.

Additionally, Dr. Blakeslee served for three years as the incoming chair, chair, and past chair of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum (AWAC) during a critical time, bringing her considerable leadership experience during the COVID-19 pandemic and setting the organization on a course for growth and ongoing success. She currently serves Associate Publisher for Books with the WAC Clearinghouse where she has played a key role in an ongoing effort to create sustainable, ethical practices.

These accomplishments strongly support her recognition as a Distinguished Fellow of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum.

Linda Hirsch
Hostos Community College/CUNY
Selected 2025

Linda Hirsch is the Director of the Liberal Arts Degree and Co-Coordinator of the Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum (WRAC) program at Hostos Community College/CUNY, a Hispanic Serving Institution located in the south Bronx, one of the nation’s poorest Congressional districts. She was a pioneer of WAC at CUNY in 1999, working with planning groups to create and implement the University’s 24-campus-wide mandated WAC Initiative, which still exists today. Under her guidance, the Hostos WRAC Program continues to evolve and is cited as a model across CUNY.

As WAC Coordinator, Hirsch has also examined the unique, reciprocal relationship of CUNY graduate student Writing Fellows and faculty. In 2011 she published the co-authored piece, “The Writing Fellow/Faculty Collaboration: Paradigms of Teaching & Learning across the Curriculum” which explores the dynamics of this relationship, and which is standard reading in CUNY WAC professional development seminars. This article is one of more than a dozen publications and more than 60 conference presentations going back to the late 1980s that demonstrate the impact of her work at Hostos/CUNY and on the larger WAC/WID community of scholars.

Hirsch is the recipient of the 2023 Hostos Community College Presidential Medal of Honor for Outstanding Faculty Member. She received a NISOD Excellence Award in 2005, is the co-founder and past President of the CUNY Writing Centers Association, and is past President of the CUNY ESL Council. She currently conducts WAC professional development workshops for faculty and Writing Fellows at campuses and schools both within and outside of CUNY. She has also served as Content Consultant on the Children’s Television Network (PBS) series Ghostwriter, a TV program designed to enhance children’s literacy skills. Based on all these accomplishments and contributions to WAC/WID over 40 years, the award committee unanimously agrees that Linda Hirsch deserves to be named a Distinguished Fellow.