Several students were recognized for their performances in this year’s Shapiro Writing Contests at the Shapiro Writing Festival.
Dr. Sara Lundquist, associate professor and chair of English, presented Joel Lipman with a certificate in honor of his professor emeritus of English designation.
The Shapiro I Essay Revision Contest is a campus-wide writing contest for all UT students. The Shapiro II Annual Writing Contest is for students who submit an essay written for an English class.
Of the students who competed in the two Shapiro contests, Ereck Wheeler, a junior majoring in social work, won first prize in the professional/technical writing category for the second year in a row.
“What I like about technical writing is that it blends creative and professional writing,” Wheeler said. “I hope to use my skills to write grants for nonprofits someday.”
Wheeler said his essay, “Discover Toledo, Ohio,” was a hypothetical business proposal to get a Swedish company to open a manufacturing plant in the Glass City.
Essay winners were selected by the Shapiro Committee, which includes Co-Chairs Sara Yaklin, senior lecturer of English, and Deborah Coulter-Harris, associate lecturer of English, as well as Timothy Geiger, professor of English, Carmen Phelps, associate professor of English, and Suzanne Smith, senior lecturer of English.
There were 42 student winners in the Shapiro II Annual Writing Contest and 15 in the Shapiro I Essay Revision Contest. The annual recognition event for the top winners allowed students to invite a guest to celebrate their accomplishments.
“It was a wonderful, heartwarming evening,” Coulter-Harris said. “We wanted this to be a very student-centered ceremony.”
In addition, Yaklin recognized the Kalmbach Scholars, who received the Fern R. Kalmbach Memorial Scholarship, and Joel Lipman, Lucas County Poet Laureate and author, was recognized for receiving professor emeritus or English status.
The writing contests and the Shapiro Writing Festival were made possible by an endowment from Dr. Edward Shapiro, professor emeritus, who taught economics at UT for 22 years until his 1989 retirement.
