Reynolds College Blog

Nancy Allen Writing II award winners announced

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Missouri State University’s Department of English has announced the winners and finalists of the first annual Nancy Allen Research Writing Awards competition.

Winning entries represented a variety of writings, according to Lori Rogers, Writing II coordinator. Paper topics included discipline-specific, source-informed arguments as well as source-informed texts for digital platforms, the workplace and creative audiences.

Currently, the competition features two categories, “Entering the Conversation” and “Expanding the Conversation.” The selection committee, comprised of Writing II faculty members, chose three winners for each category along with several finalists.

Submission quality reveals student effort

Rogers said the quality of student writing reminded the committee “how hard our students work to excel at one of the most difficult tasks we have as human beings: conveying our ideas, questions and conclusions on paper or on screen. That’s a challenging endeavor for any of us.”

The committee was also impressed with the level of faculty engagement, Rogers noted. Writing II instructors nominated student entries through an anonymous submission and awards selection process.

“Given this was our first year offering the awards, we were all very surprised and happy to discover we had faculty submissions for 28 students,” she said. “That number really indicates how many of our teachers were willing to make the effort to give their students a chance at recognition for their hard work.”

The competition recognizes exemplary student research and writing from any Writing II course. Eligible courses include AGR 320; ENG 210, 221, 310, and 321; GLG 358; and HST 210.

Winners featured on department website

The English Department is featuring the selected entries on its website, Rogers said. She hopes this heightened online presence will allow future Writing II students to learn from their peers.

“Most texts that students read are written by highly qualified and established writers, so we are so grateful to have a way to demonstrate student writing that’s coming from a closer level of possibility and inspiration,” she noted.

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Nancy Allen Research Writing Awards competition announced

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Missouri State University’s Department of English and the Reynolds College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (RCASH) announce the first annual Nancy Allen Research Writing Awards competition.

The competition recognizes exemplary research and writing by students enrolled in any of MSU’s Writing II courses. Eligible Writing II courses include AGR 320; ENG 210, 221, 310, and 321; GLG 358; and HST 210.

Writing II courses introduce students to the writing of their chosen disciplines and professions. As such, exemplary writing will demonstrate research-informed discussion from a variety of disciplines and writing approaches, said Lori Rogers, senior instructor and Writing II coordinator at MSU.

Inspired by student efforts

Rogers, who has taught writing at MSU for over 20 years, created and developed the competition. Students – and their work – inspired her to create the award.

“Many of them put so much time and effort into developing their writing, but there isn’t much opportunity to celebrate undergraduate research writing,” she said. “This award will let us recognize exemplary writing.”

Nancy Allen an ideal example

Woman standing outside building
Nancy Allen.

When searching for an ideal example around which to build the competition, Rogers immediately thought of Nancy Allen.

“We have a strong belief in our department that you can do almost anything with an English major,” Rogers noted. “That ability to create success from a liberal arts background is what Nancy Allen truly represents.”

Allen’s educational and career background provided the perfect example, Rogers said. She first trained as a teacher before attending law school and becoming a prosecuting attorney. Additionally, Allen taught law at MSU for 15 years and is now a bestselling mystery author.

“She has done almost everything you can do with an English major,” Rogers said. “And she has done all that because she was first trained in research and writing, which develops a core knowledge and practice in critical thinking and writing that can allow you to become whatever you want to be.”

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Remembering Dr. Donald Holliday, 1939-2024

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Emeritus Professor Dr. Donald R. Holliday, who taught in the Department of English for over 30 years, passed away Aug. 24, 2024, in Nixa, Missouri.

Holliday was born Sept. 17, 1939, in Pinetop, Missouri, to Admiral Schley and Eva Mabel (Drane) Holliday. In his self-written obituary, Holliday described a hard-scrabble childhood on the family’s small tobacco farm.

After graduating from Hollister High School, Holliday enlisted in the U.S. Navy. One of his first assignments in the Navy was as an aviation boatswain’s mate to a guided missile cruiser during the Cuban missile crisis.

Holliday received full military honors at his burial in Gobblers Knob Cemetery, Hollister, Missouri, Sept. 7.

“First educational loves – learning and teaching”

Holliday began teaching at Missouri State in 1966 after having earned his master’s in English from University of Arkansas. He was granted educational leave to complete his PhD at the University of Minnesota. Holliday retired from MSU in 2001.

During his tenure at MSU, Holliday not only taught but also served as head of the English department in the 1980s, then as Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Letters for two years.

But in his obituary, Holliday wrote that his “first educational loves [were] learning and teaching.”

In particular, he was most proud of having developed the English department’s course on Mark Twain. The course “filled every semester it was taught, to overloads,” he wrote.

Holliday believed Twain was the most important writer in American literature “because, a century before any other notable writer took up the subject, Mark Twain tried to show Americans the stupidity and blindness not only of slavery, but of white superiority itself.”

Career focused on the Ozarks

Throughout his academic career, Holliday placed special emphasis on the Ozarks. In 1975, he helped create MSU’s Ozarks Studies program. Along with Drs. Robert Gilmore and Robert Flanders, Holliday also coedited the OzarksWatch Magazine, then became its editor from 1993-2001.

“I am especially grateful for his knowledge of and love for the Ozarks and his leadership in establishing our formal program in Ozarks Studies,” said emeritus professor of English Dr. Kris Sutliff, who worked alongside Holliday in the 1980s and 1990s.

Even his dissertation topic was about the Ozarks. In fact, professor of history and Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies Dr. Brooks Blevins could not help but marvel at how Holliday arrived at that topic, which researched an early Ozarks pioneer family – the Hollidays.

“Who else besides Don Holliday would have ventured up north to graduate school…and proceeded to convince his professors to let him write a dissertation about his own family?” Blevins said. “Now, this may have been right up there with the best sales jobs ever pulled off by someone from Taney County.”

“This was at the height of 1970s fascination with the Ozarks,” Blevins continued, “and the Hollidays of Pinetop must have seemed every bit as exotic and colorful as ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ to a set of Minnesota professors.”

Describing the dissertation as one of the best he had ever read, Blevins said it inspired him to include the Holliday family in his own work, the three-volume “A History of the Ozarks.”

“Don was a master storyteller, speaker and teacher, possessed of a combination of elite scholarly training, downhome horse sense and dry, store-porch wit,” Blevins said. [Read more…] about Remembering Dr. Donald Holliday, 1939-2024