Recoulley Home Faculty Information Past Winners Composition Home Permission Form
The mission of the ReCoulley Composition Contest is to help students become excellent writers and to reward them for their efforts.
Our beliefs are as follows:
It is our feeling that students deserve recognition for the excellent writing they produce in our classes. Such recognition increases their confidence in their writing. For our students winning this award may be a life defining achievement.
Showcasing excellent student writing helps the SPSU community and the community at large to recognize the quality of the Composition Program at SPSU. It is to our advantage to promote our program through the excellent work that is done within it. It is a goal of the academic community at SPSU to showcase excellent student work.
Sharing the writing with new freshman students helps us to define excellent writing and helps freshmen students to shoot for high goals for their writing and to become familiar with the writing contest.
Taking part in the contest as faculty members and students helps us to explore what the SPSU composition community values in writing.
The Recoulley Writing Contest runs on the annual calendar, not on the school calendar. Student writings from ENGL 1101 and ENGL 1102 are collected by the Contest Coordinators the last week in February. These papers should have been written for spring, summer and fall semesters of the previous year. Thus, in February of 2006, student writings from spring, summer, and fall of 2005 may be submitted. Part-time and full-time composition instructors are urged to submit student writing. Each instructor may submit up to three papers for each composition section they teach.
Student writing packets should contain the following materials:
All drafts. Rough drafts should be turned in with the final draft when possible. Three final copies of the work, word processed and double-spaced; no name or teacher comments on the work. Students rarely will hand their work in without their name or without teacher comments so feel free to white-out the above information on a xeroxed copy and to make the three copies from this document.
Optional - a process sheet – a brief narrative that explains the assignment; when did he/she begin? How did he/she decide on what to write? What were his/her processes as he/she wrote? These are some of the questions a student might answer.
Optional--an electronic copy of the paper. Ideally we will publish the work of the winners on the Internet.
A permission form. You can download a copy of the permission form by clicking on the link.
Once the student writings are collected, the Contest Coordinators will send out a call for Recoulley Award Readers to all Composition Instructors: full-time and part-time instructors may read for the contest. At least three readers will be recruited to read for the contest. Final drafts of student writings will be distributed and readers will be given until the end of March to read the essays. The Contest Coordinators will then tally up the votes and the winners will be announced to the HTC community. Two students will be chosen as winners and receive $50 in cash awards and certificates. A third student will receive an Honorable Mention Certificate.
Students will receive their rewards at the Student Awards Ceremony hosted at the end of the spring semester.
There are numerous ways to help students become involved with the contest:
Begin by informing students of the contest early in the semester. You may even want to hand out permission forms and ask each student who is wlling to let you place a paper in the contest to fill out the form. Getting the form signed is half the battle.
Send students to pertinent links on the Internet. Peak their interest.
When you receive an excellent paper, write an endnote to the student writer that suggests he submit his paper to the contest. If you have already collected permission forms, write an endnote at the end of the paper asking the student to return it so that you can submit it to the contest.
On the last day of class, have students re-submit their work whether you need it for portfolio grading or not. You can tell the students you will use their work to help you out in tight situations where a grade could go either way. Bring Recoulley Award Permission Forms to class and urge students who are proud of a piece of writing to enter it into the contest.
Students are often reluctant to take risks. Suggest that if they don't turn a paper in that they're in the same place they would be if they turned it in and didn't win. They have already written the paper, they might as well see if it will earn them an award.
Have your own contest the last day of class. Have students interested in winning the "best" writing awards for your class, read their essays to the class and then have the students take a private vote. You may even award some type of participation credit or bonus credit for taking part in your contest. Urge the winners of your contest to submit their essays to the ReCoulley Award Contest. Have permission forms on hand.
Submit papers for students when they feel strongly about them whether you believe the papers to be worthy or not. You may be surprised by the results. Don't worry about whether you will be judged by the quality of the work. The readers do not know what paper came from what class. The contest is about the students, not about the teachers.
Probably the most important thing to remember is that once a student leaves your class without arranging to submit a paper to the contest, that paper will more than likely never be submitted.