Su-Yueh Wu

Two COE doctoral graduates from the department of language education have been chosen to receive the Promising Researcher Award from the National Council of Teachers of English.

Chandra Adkins, of Maxeys, and Su-Yueh Wu, of Alpharetta, both of whom completed their doctoral work last year, won two of the three awards annually given based on doctoral dissertations. It is rare that two winners are chosen from the same institution in a given year, according to NCTE officials.

"The NCTE Promising Researcher Award is a bellweather of significant topics facing the field of English/language arts education," said Don Rubin, professor of language education and Wu's mentor.

"Since Su-Yueh's work pertains to the writing of native Chinese speakers, I find it highly significant that the selection panel chose her project. It signals to me that in contemporary U.S. education, issues of second language can no longer be divorced from native tongue English education," he says. "In our increasingly global and diverse society, the lines are forever blurred."

Wu, a native of Taiwan, earned her bachelor's degree in Foreign Language and Literatures at National Chung-Hsing University in Taiwan. Before coming to America, she taught English in language schools to students ranging from kindergarten age to senior high school. She received her M.Ed. Degree in the TESOL program in language education at UGA.

Wu hopes to return to Taiwan to teach courses in teaching methodology and practice in the field of English as a Foreign Language. She also hopes that translation between Chinese and English will be a second career.

Adkins' work examines the charges of "presentism" - the use of values and morals of contemporary society to write about or interpret the past - that have been leveled against a selected group of historical novels written for young people.

"Dr. Adkins joins the growing number of scholars focusing on the sociocultural and political dimensions of children's literature. Rather than politicizing debates about literature, this approach recognizes that a political dimension already exists to all aspects of culture. This especially is the case for children's literature which scholars have long recognized constitutes a very special conversation between a society and its youth," said Joel Taxel, professor of language education and Adkins' mentor.

Adkins, a native of Madison County, is a teacher at Washington-Wilkes Comprehensive High School and has taught for 16 years. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in English Education from UGA.

Writer: Michael Childs, 706/542-5889, mchilds@coe.uga.edu
Contact: Joel Taxel, 706/542-4511, jtaxel@coe.uga.edu