June 7, 2021

By Kelsey Pritchett

The Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences is pleased to share that Elizabeth Kelley, assistant professor, has been chosen for a 2021 Writing Intensive Teaching Excellence Award from the MU Campus Writing Program. This award’s purpose is to recognize outstanding writing-intensive teaching that helps achieve the goal of “writing to learn and learning to write” across disciplines.

Dr. Kelley was nominated by Stacy Wagovich, department chair, for SLHS 3020: Normal Language Development. This carefully constructed course has a range of assignments that allow students to develop their writing skills, using formal to less formal styles while focusing on accuracy and informativeness.

The students in her course share that Dr. Kelley is an excellent teacher, conveys content well and makes herself highly available to her students for questions and concerns. One of the requirements of this award is that the instructor’s assignments promote critical thinking, multiple interpretations and meaningful learning. The students emphasized that during the spring 2020 semester shift to remote learning, Dr. Kelley was creative and delivered her course’s content in a fun way during an otherwise stressful time. They noted that she truly cares about the students and consistently provides great feedback, mentoring the students in their learning and writing.

Dr. Kelley’s two current GRAs, Dylan Thompson and Samantha Boyd, share that she “approaches collaboration with teaching assistants with the same care that she gives her courses. She goes above and beyond to train us and provide resources that make grading efficient, fair, and precise.” They highlighted that, in being her graduate assistants, they “have learned not only how to be better writers, but also how to better consume and analyze writing because of her hard work.”

Dr. Wagovich said, “In addition to being an excellent teacher, [Dr. Kelley] is passionate about teaching content through writing and instilling in students the need to practice writing throughout college, their professional lives, and beyond!”

Adrianne Frech, associate professor of Health Sciences, also received a 2021 Writing Intensive Teaching Excellence Award. Watch her video below.