National Council of Teachers of English Announces 2019 Leadership Award Recipients
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is pleased to announce the 2019 recipients of its six leadership awards. Each of these awards is given to a recipient who has demonstrated significant contributions to the Council. Nominations are issued by member groups of the Council and final decisions are made by NCTE’s Executive Committee.
Award recipients will be honored during a ceremony at the 2019 NCTE Annual Convention in Baltimore, Maryland on Saturday, November 23.
Mollie Blackburn, Ohio State University
NCTE LGBTQ+ Advocacy & Leadership Award
Mollie Blackburn is a professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on literacy, language, and social change, with particular attention to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youth and the teachers who serve them. She is the author of Interrupting Hate, the editor of Adventurous Thinking, among other co-authored and co-edited books. She has received WILLA’s Inglis Award for work in gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, and young people; AERA’s Queer Studies SIG body of work award; and the Alan C. Purves Award for an article in the Research in the Teaching of English deemed rich with implications for classroom practice.
Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, University of Delaware
NCTE Leadership Award for People with Disabilities
Stephanie L. Kerschbaum is a associate professor of English at the University of Delaware. Her book Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference won the 2015 Advancement of Knowledge Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and she has authored or co-authored more than twenty essays, articles, and book chapters. She served as chair of the Committee on Disability Issues in College Composition from 2015-18 and was elected as a member of the CCCC Executive Committee from 2016-19. During 2019-20 she is scholar-in-residence at the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan.
David E. Kirkland, New York University
NCTE Advancement of People of Color Leadership Award
David E. Kirkland is a professor of English and urban education at New York University, where he also serves as the executive director of the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. A leading national scholar and advocate for education justice, Dr. Kirkland has spent decades analyzing the cultures, languages, and texts of urban youth, using critical mixed methods approaches to answer questions that center equity in classrooms and beyond. He has received many awards for his work, including the 2014 NCTE David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English.
Nicole Mirra, Rutgers University
Awarded for Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement (Teachers College Press, 2018)
David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English
Nicole Mirra is an assistant professor of urban teacher education in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She previously taught high school English Language Arts in Brooklyn, New York and Los Angeles, California. Her research explores the intersections of critical literacy and civic engagement with youth and teachers across classroom, community, and digital learning environments. Central to her research and teaching agenda is a commitment to honoring and amplifying the literacy practices and linguistic resources that students from minoritized communities bring to civic life.
Ernest Morrell, University of Notre Dame
Distinguished Service Award
Ernest Morrell is the Coyle Professor of Literacy Education and Inaugural Director of the Center for Literacy Education at the University of Notre Dame. He is an elected Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Ernest has been annually ranked among the top 200 university-based education scholars in the RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings published by EdWeek. He has authored 90 articles and book chapters and ten books His scholarly interests include: literacy studies, new directions in the teaching of English, critical media pedagogy, youth popular culture, and the literature of the African Diaspora.
Kathleen Blake Yancey, Florida State University
James R. Squire Award
This award is given by the Executive Committee in recognition of outstanding service, not only to the stature and development of NCTE and the discipline which it represents, but also to the profession of education as a whole, internationally as well as nationally.
Kathleen Blake Yancey, Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English and Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University, has served as an elected leader for several professional/scholarly organizations, including NCTE. Her scholarship focuses on composition studies; on students’ transfer of writing knowledge and practice; on cultural studies of everyday writing; on writing assessment, especially print and electronic portfolios; and on the intersections of culture, literacies, and technologies. A past editor of two journals, Yancey has authored or edited, often with colleagues, 16 books and 100+ articles and book chapters. She is the recipient of several awards, including the FSU Graduate Teaching Award, the Purdue University Distinguished Woman Scholar Award, and the CCCC Exemplar Award.
For Immediate Release: Contact Jenna Fournel, Communications Director at jfournel@ncte.org or 703.599.5749