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The Great Lakes Colleges Association is pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 GLCA New Writers Award for Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Non-fiction. Now in its 53rd year, the New Writers Award confers recognition on promising writers who have published a first volume in one of the three genres.  Judges of the New Writers Award are faculty members of creative writing and literature at GLCA’s member colleges.  Winning writers receive invitations to visit GLCA member colleges – where they give readings, meet with students and faculty members, and discuss technique and creativity in the writing process. 

The 2022 winner for Poetry is Sumita Chakraborty, Arrow, published by Alice James Books.  Our GLCA judges note:

The poems in Sumita Chakraborty’s masterful debut, Arrow, range from the epic maximalism of long lyric poems to the minimalism of aphorisms and redacted translations. The book’s journey is part imaginative mythmaking and part rigorous intellectual investigation.         
The collection exhibits a capacity to narrow on the deeply personal and mythical, while also expanding to the cosmic, citational, and philosophical. These formal shifts in perspective amplify the poet’s grappling with the residual presence of a sibling’s death. This tension between direct address and obfuscation propels the collection’s wide stylistic range and rich lyricism, refracting the book’s explorations of loss and love outward into conversations with philosophy, astronomy, literature, and even deep into language itself. 
Chakroborty’s poems have a spell-like intensity of language – searching, lively, varied – sometimes expressing frustration, sometimes growing song-like.  She speaks with a punctuating crispness, while retaining the power of poetry to leave us with astonishment and mystery.

Judges of the 2022 Poetry Award were:
David Caplan, Ohio Wesleyan University
Robin Schaer, Oberlin College
Orchid Tierney, Kenyon College

The 2022 winner for Fiction is Michael X. Wang, Further News of Defeat, published by Autumn House Press.  Our GLCA judges note:

This collection demonstrates an extraordinary range: real and fantastic, urban and rural, young and old, past and present. The stories move with measured and unflinching prose. The characters, charged equally by desperation and impulsivity, are live wires crossing powerful and often predatorial forces. Violence is endemic, personal and state-sponsored.  The grace notes, humor, odd encounters and ironies leaven the violence and make it survivable. 
The disparate narrators show Wang’s extraordinary capacity to empathize with different people. Wang is thorough in imagining the thoughts of his characters, especially when their thoughts are questionable or when they’re not behaving well. The authorial distance seems quite an accomplishment in a writer’s first work.  The stories are literary, but written as if told and not written.  At its intersection, Wang delivers stories of remarkable symmetry.
This is a collection full of devastating loss, yet resonant light cracking against the long night.  

Judges of the Fiction Award were:
Mari Christmas, Allegheny College
Andrew Mozina, Kalamazoo College
Robert Olmstead, Ohio Wesleyan University

The 2022 winner for Creative Non-Fiction is Melissa Valentine, The Names of All the Flowers, published by Feminist Press.  Our GLCA judges note:

Melissa Valentine’s story is one of collective trauma, rendered beautifully in the details of a large biracial family in the 1990s. Whether set in Oakland, California or Selma, Alabama, The Names of All the Flowers interrogates how place shapes consciousness, how identity can flower in unlikely locations but also be extinguished.  Valentine offers us a lyrical but also anguished portrait of the complicated borderland between the good and bad sections of town, between black and white parents, between being innocent and being doomed.
Our narrator, who sees everything and shows it to us through shifting lenses, child and adult, uses present tense to hold us in a perpetual present. The pulse of this memoir is urgency. The story of her brother’s untimely death, Valentine seems to say, not only never ends, it is always happening somewhere. 
Standing in the family cemetery next to her brother’s grave, she comes to see “how [my brother’s] lost black life is every lost black life, how my grief is part of a collective sorrow.”  Anchored in place, Valentine’s vision is indeed transcendent, evoking many ghosts and graveyards, troubled families and streets, across an entire country trying to survive as well as remedy a racist past and present.  

Judges of the Creative Non-Fiction Award were:
Elizabeth Eslami, DePauw University
Eric Freeze, Wabash College
Daniel Bourne, The College of Wooster

For more information on the New Writers Award, please contact Colleen Monahan Smith, ([email protected]) at the GLCA.

 

Richard Detweiler

Richard A. Detweiler, President Emeritus of the GLCA, has published a major research study on the impact of a liberal arts education on the lives of its graduates.

The book is entitled The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs:  Lives of Consequence, Inquiry, and Accomplishment. (MIT Press, 2021) 

The study presents a strong case for the value of liberal arts education.  It verifies this claim, not by rhetorical or philosophical appeals, but through a rigorous empirical study of a random sample of 1,000 people across the U.S. in cohorts that graduated 10, 20, or 40 years earlier.

The interviews asked participants a range of questions to describe both the “what” and “how” of their education:  what kind of university or college they attended, the kinds of courses taken, average class sizes, encouragement to develop larger perspectives and discuss with others inside and outside of class.  These were supplemented by questions about involvement in social activities and interaction on campus, such as clubs and athletics. 

Respondents were also asked about their subsequent lives in society:  satisfaction with life and career, participation in volunteer activities, civic engagement, and income.

Detweiler’s results indicate an array of factors that distinguish graduates of liberal arts colleges from those of other kinds of institutions.  As the book’s subtitle suggests, this analytical project sought to trace the relationships between the experience of higher education and “lives of consequence, inquiry, and accomplishment” at intervals in later life. 

Two significant findings show a distinct link between a student’s educational experience in relation to those three desired qualities later in life:

  • The number of times a student talks with a faculty member – on academic or non-academic subjects – outside of class; and
  • The practice of taking more than half of one’s classes outside the student’s major field of study.

By its very nature as small residential learning communities, liberal arts colleges are in positions to maximize the likelihood of significant mentorship between a student and faculty member.  They are also settings likely to support student interests in exploring across academic disciplines to reap the benefits of reading and thinking widely in the course of their learning. 

Richard Detweiler’s book offers a distinctive set of insights into the nature and value of the liberal arts.  The study provides new inroads to understanding the connections between liberal arts undergraduate study and the achievement of a life of engaged consequence and fulfillment.  

Update:  Since the first posting of this GLCA news article, Rick Detweiler’s book has been distinguished as one of “The Best Higher Education Books of 2021” by Forbes Magazine.  Forbes calls the book “a superb source for all those wanting a clear explanation of the value of the liberal arts.”  

An interview with Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Education, appears here.

The link to Richard Detweiler’s book, published by MIT Press can be found here.

At the opening session of the 2021 Council of Independent Colleges’ Chief Academic Officer Institute, Provost Ron Cole of Allegheny College was presented with the 2021 CIC Chief Academic Officer Award.

Mickey McDonald (left) congratulates Ron Cole on his award.

The award recognized Cole’s support of colleagues at independent colleges and universities including regularly presenting at CIC institutes and the CIC Workshops for Department and Division Chairs, and leading the Mentor Program for new CAOs.  Present at the ceremony was GLCA President Mickey McDonald and CAOs from GLCA members institutions.  “Ron is well deserving of this award.  He thinks deeply about collaboration, camaraderie and sharing knowledge,” noted McDonald.

In his recognition speech, Cole remarked on his thoughts on leadership:

“Lead with empathy, lead to serve, and lead for purpose. I believe these are essential ingredients to build the leadership capacity and positive morale that’s needed to achieve those goals that ultimately are meant to serve our students and strengthen our institutions.  Strategic goals for programs and policies will evolve and change. But, the culture of leadership shapes how we achieve our goals and that, I believe, is long lasting …I’d like my legacy to be a community of care built from empathy, service, and purpose – because this is how I believe we achieve our strongest outcomes.”

Cole joined the faculty at Allegheny College in 1994 and has served as Provost and Dean of the College since 2015.  He is currently the Chair of the GLCA Deans’ Council. 

See the announcement of the award from Allegheny College here.  Learn more about the Council for Independent Colleges here.

April 7, 2021

Charla White, Program Officer and Controller of the Great Lakes Colleges Association, was featured in a podcast on the evolving challenges of building collaborations, among colleges during the pandemic in particular. Charla was interviewed by Debra Masheck of Myco Consulting, LLC. Their conversation ranged from the origin of the GLCA as a way to help member institutions do together what no one college could do alone (such as study abroad in the early days), to collaborating with other consortia (such as the Associated Colleges of the Midwest), to collaborations among admission staff and those working on diversity, equity and inclusion to address challenges institutions faced during the pandemic. We invite you to view the podcast.

January 8, 2021

The Great Lakes Colleges Association is pleased to announce the winners of the 2021 GLCA New Writers Award for Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Non-fiction. Now in its 52nd year, the New Writers Award confers recognition on promising writers who have published a first volume in one of the three genres.  Judges of the New Writers Award are faculty members of creative writing and literature at GLCA’s member colleges.  Winning writers receive invitations to visit GLCA member colleges – where they give readings, meet with students and faculty members, and discuss technique and creativity in the writing process. 

The 2021 winner for Poetry is Marianne Chan, All Heathens, published by Sarabande Books. 


Our GLCA judges note:  This entire book is buoyant and richly drawn. It is funny, while not shying away from the complexities of colonizing history and its lingering presence. All Heathens feels full of love, but at the same time, a refusal to be boxed in. Chan takes risks, and in doing so, she speaks clearly, truthfully, sharply, all while singing beautifully. Her imagery –  at times crystalline, at times comical, always imaginative – strike the heart and the mind.

Chan’s clarity of language in combination with her exploration of Filipino American identity moved me to consider my own place in the world. Her poems seek very much to communicate, but do so with terrific structural integrity and variety, and I felt led through the poetic process in every poem. Her reflection on her family’s status as ‘heathens’ and the term’s implied savagery, her consideration of her family’s place in US culture, and her desire to be understood all give me a sense of intimacy. I felt as if a casual confidant, made to feel part of the poet’s circle of friends. 

Judges of the Poetry entries were:
Oliver Baez Bendorf, Kalamazoo College
Helena Mesa, Albion College
Pablo Peschiera, Hope College

The 2021 winner for Fiction is Gabriel Bump, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Our GLCA judges note:  Gabriel Bump has written a book that stands apart as a coming-of-age story that ventures into the absurd and is by turns darkly comic. It is funny and tough-minded.  The prose goes off like a rocket, powerful, a little shocking at times. The plot is big, but never overwhelms the characters, whose relationships are so poignantly drawn. The novel has astonishing narrative drive and control. Bump writes some of the most piquant, electrifying sentences and scenes. His prose seems self-assuredly his own. He draws characters who are unique and memorable. The Chicago scenes are especially compelling.

Bump positions his main character with a certain narrative distance.  Claude exists between the reader and the world, and he understands this.  He’s a messenger.  He’s a window.  He’s an Ishmael.  He’s bringing the news from one world to another.  While precise and particular to his time and place and telling needful stories, Claude McKay Love takes a position in American literature alongside Huck Finn, Esther Greenwood, Holden Caulfield.  I sense this writer going on to write more books. 

Judges of the Fiction Award were:
Emily Barton, Oberlin College
Robert Olmstead, Ohio Wesleyan University
Keija Parssinen, Kenyon College

The 2021 winner for Creative Non-fiction is Nina Boutsikaris, I’m Trying to Tell You I’m Sorry, published by Black Lawrence Press. 

Our GLCA judges note:  I’m Trying to Tell You I’m Sorry is both bold and spare, the troubling story of a young woman trying to find and lose herself in New York City. The prose has clear elegance like water, and the brief scenes are a testament to the power and pitfalls of being beautiful in a world all too ready to take.

I’m lost in Boutsikaris’s language, lost within these pages, lost between desire and wanting. Lost in a good way. Boutsikaris has an amazing control of lyricism, changing tone in a matter of sentences – from scholar to philosopher to character-in-the-moment. It is glorious to be witness to such precision. 

Boutsikaris blurs disciplinary boundaries by employing raw and at times profane language and personal storytelling to bring theory to lived experience. And she turns the notion of the gaze on itself: as a recipient of the male gaze, she takes it and turns it outward, boldly, sighting, siting, and citing art, philosophers, and herself through reclamation of language.

Judges of the 2021 award in Creative Non-fiction were:
Marin Heinritz, Kalamazoo College
Ira Sukrungruang, Kenyon College
Lili Wright, DePauw University

For more information on the New Writers Award, please contact Gregory Wegner, Director of Program Development ([email protected]), or Colleen Monahan Smith, Executive Assistant to the President ([email protected]) at the GLCA.

Additional information is available on the GLCA web site: GLCA New Writers Award

August 13, 2020

Events of the past five months have brought about changes to higher education – and to society itself – of unprecedented magnitude and impact.  Things that might have seemed unthinkable in late winter now define our shared existence as educators and inhabitants of a nation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has unhinged many traditions once conceived as inviolate principles of how teaching and learning take place in our colleges; today there is all-but-universal awareness of the need to adopt different approaches to education.  The new reality has also underscored the fact that many students are at significant disadvantage in the colleges they attend, whether taught in class or on-line.  At the same time, the killing of an unarmed African American man by a police officer in Minneapolis has led to widespread national outrage, and intensified awareness of how much our societies and our institutions are imbued with racist traditions and thinking.

To address the unique challenges of our time and provide a useful resource to those who educate college students, The Great Lakes Colleges Association/Global Liberal Arts Alliance (GLCA/GLAA) Consortium for Teaching and Learning (CTL) announces a major recasting of its web site:  http://glcateachlearn.org. 

Both the organization and design of the newly configured web site center on three main categories, as highlighted on the home page: “Into the Fall Semester,” offering resources and advice on teaching across modes, including general advice and technical/technological support; “Inclusive Pedagogies,” applying Universal Design for Learning to the present moment, focusing on issues of access and responding to the different learning circumstances and needs of individual students; and “Anti-Racist Pedagogies,” offering resources and approaches for developing anti-racist pedagogies across the curriculum, and advice on making our classrooms truly diverse, inclusive, equitable, and welcoming. 

Each topic heading within these categories designates “2 Go-To Articles” as salient treatments that offer key concepts in treating a topic.  Other groups of articles address related subjects that give more texture for those who seek it. We hope this arrangement can help reduce the anxiety that faculty members can easily feel at the amount of materials to read, which can seem overwhelming. 

The materials are curated in a way that includes recently published pieces as well as resources published earlier in the Covid season and prior to that.  The entries include written articles and video clips.  The editorial approach does not set out to argue a specific thesis but to offer perspectives that can help readers reach decisions of how to structure their own courses. 

Steven Volk, the Co-Director of our CTL, has done a masterful job of designing and building our recast web site, and we are indebted to his vision and resourcefulness. 

If you would like to have your name added to the CTL mailing list to receive periodic updates, please find the inquiry form at the bottom of the home page of the CTL web site.  The form asks only for your name, e-mail address, and institution to receive regular updates.

We also reach out to all of you who would like to contribute to our repository of resources that could be valuable to readers of the CTL site.  Please write to us at the e-mail addresses listed below to recommend a citation for inclusion.  Just as important, if there is a subject that you would like to write about for submission to the CTL, please do not hesitate to contact us.

 

GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning

Co-Directors:

Gregory Wegner ([email protected])
Steven Volk ([email protected])
Web site: http://glcateachlearn.org/

Banner photo credit:  Pittwire — University of Pittsburgh