Dr. Stephanie Vie, associate professor and Interim Department Chair for Writing and Rhetoric, will be recognized at the 2017 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) as the recipient of a 2017 Research Initiative grant. The CCCC, an association within the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), is the flagship organization for scholars in rhetoric, composition, and writing studies. Established in 2004, the CCCC Research Initiative grant program currently awards grants of up to $10,000 for research that will advance the organization.
The Research Initiative grants for 2017 support research projects that can contribute to or affect discussions about literacy and writing instruction in and out of formal education. The initiative asks recipients to clearly address the impact that their research might have on these conversations, conveying the implications of their work in at least two final products: one that is addressed to a scholarly audience of researchers and teachers in the field, and one that is addressed to a specifically identified more public audience.
Vie’s project, Social Media in the Composition Classroom, is one of only seven funded projects from the CCCC this year. The $8,100 grant will support Vie’s research into undergraduate students’ experiences in college writing classrooms, exploring assignments and other pedagogical artifacts that ask students to analyze or compose with or about social media. This project will extend preliminary research on social media use in the composition classroom in two ways:
- First, a national survey of and interviews with undergraduates in composition classes will explore their attitudes toward and experiences with social media use in the writing classroom.
- Second, the collection and analysis of sample assignments will provide data on how students are being asked to incorporate and assess social media in the writing classroom.
Vie will be recognized as a recipient of the grant at the CCCC Awards/Recognition Reception, to be held 5:00 p.m.–6:30 p.m. at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Portland, Oregon.