2025 Writing Across the Curriculum Award Winners

We would like to congratulate this year’s winners of the Writing Across the Curriculum awards, Dr. Erica Tracey (faculty, Neuroscience) and Will Hodge (graduate consultant, History).

WAC Faculty Award Winner: Dr. Erica Tracey

Dr. Erica Tracey teaches in theNeuroscience Institute and was nominated for her work in the Professional Development in Neuroscience course. Dr. Tracey is committed to enhancing and sustaining writing-intensive instruction as a high-impact educational practice, challenging students to apply their course-based knowledge to real-world problems. In the Professional Development course, Dr. Tracey equips students with diverse experiences, goals, and questions to find the right people to answer their queries and gain the confidence to reach out. Students practice critical thinking in ambiguous professional and ethical situations and collaboratively deconstruct the hidden curriculum.

In 2024, Dr. Tracey expanded efforts to support students' critical reflection on AI use in academic spaces, including AI-generated writing samples for critique and rule generation activities for professional documents. This initiative led students to personalize their work, improving its marketability. In implementing WAC principles, Dr. Tracey has shifted the framework of the class from students learning to "sell" what they have done to taking ownership of their own stories. She uses iterative feedback principles for all summative assignments; students practice giving feedback as a group on examples, then implement guidelines collaboratively before writing their own documents. In Dr. Tracey’s classes, WAC graduate consultants support the students, holding bi-weekly Student Success Events and working with students on mock-interviews. Last year, Dr. Tracey’s graduate consultant won the 2024 WAC Graduate Consultant award.

Thank you, Dr. Tracey for your exemplary work in the WAC program!

WAC Graduate Consultant Award: Will Hodge (Nominated by Dr. McMillian)

Will Hodge works as a WAC consultant for Dr. John McMillian in several of his History courses. In his nomination, Dr. McMillian wrote

“Will is exceedingly productive and conscientious. […] He has been a WAC consultant for 12 consecutive semesters since 2019 (and those who have worked with Will keep requesting him again). He has worked intensively with more students than I can count, even as he works full-time for Verizon and is writing his dissertation. A few years ago, he won the Warren Spencer Award from the Georgia Association of Historians (GAH) for writing the best article to appear in the GAH Journal of a three -year period. (That's an award that one might expect would go to a senior scholar.) Will's ability to constantly be helping undergraduates with their writing, while having so much else going on, is phenomenal. […] I have to believe he is one of most accomplished and energetic WAC Consultants at GSU.”

Will has served a 2-year appointment on the WAC Advisory Committee, and he's been invited four times to WAC Consultant Training Sessions. Dr. McMillian also mentioned that “some of the students Will has worked with have even reached out and requested his help later on, after the semester was over, seeking advice on their assignments or paper proposals. And in those cases, Will responded affirmatively!”

One student testimonial wrote: "Will Hodge has been a great help in refining my writing. His feedback was very concise and clearly outlined why the suggestions would strengthen my paper. Additionally, he preserves the core elements of my writing in his suggestions and further refines my strengths to stand out. On top of that, he is clearly a very talented writer. Will's thoughtful feedback combined with his literary skills makes him an amazing resource which I am so grateful for."

Congratulations, Will and thank you for your commitment to student success and the WAC program!

POST BY:

Katy Crowther

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