Scholarship Rocks!

A gift from alumni is helping members of the English Department pursue scholarship that helps PSU students. In 2001, the English Department received an unrestricted $249K bequest from WJ & MW Eichhorn. The department elected to use the earnings from the endowment for faculty development.

Most recently the proceeds have been used to support Don Judd, Celia Patterson, and Stephen Meats.

Don Judd , Associate Professor of English

Dr. Judd used his Eichhorn funds to support sabbatical research into course and assignment design.

“These foster critical thinking skills in English composition courses,” said Judd.  “I met with several experts including Dr. David Harvey in Merced, California, Dr. Mark Waldo of the University of Nevada-Reno, Dr. John C. Bean of  Seattle University, Dr. Michael Bernard-Donals of the University of Wisconsin, and Dr. Ira Shor of the City University of New York.”

Based on his research, Judd wrote an article on course and assignment design.

Celia Patterson, Professor of English

Dr. Celia Patterson used the support she received for her sabbatical research in the use of graphics in early American military training manuals and their predecessors.

“I spent a week at the Library of Congress and two weeks at the British Library,” said Patterson. “I must’ve photocopied 900 pages of graphics depicting battle formations, military postures, military inventions of various kinds, and fortifications.”

She also examined the British Library’s nine editions of Machiavelli’s The Art of War, the first Renaissance military manual to include graphics.

Patterson is preparing a conference presentation and a journal article on her findings.

Stephen Meats, Professor of English and Department Chair

The Chair of the Department of English, Dr. Stephen Meats used his Eichhorn grant to fund the cost of textual work and research on a new edition of The Partisan, a Revolutionary War novel by the ante-bellum southern author William Gilmore Simms.

Professor Meats traveled to the University of South Carolina to do research in the extensive archive of Simms materials in the Charles Carroll Simms Collection in the Manuscript Archives in the South Caroliniana Library. He also visited the ruins of the old fort and the church at Dorchester, S. C., which is the setting of much of the novel.

Meats is currently drafting a critical introduction to the novel and is under contract to publish the new edition with the University of Arkansas Press.