The Nancy L. Nester Awards for Excellence in Writing

These awards honor achievements in undergraduate writing at Roger Williams University.

About the Awards

ACCESS THE SUBMISSION AND NOMINATION PORTAL

The Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition is currently inviting student submissions and faculty nominations from any WTNG course offered during Spring 2024, Summer 2024, or Fall 2024. All genres are welcome—essays, reports, rhetorical analyses, audio or visual essays, videos, etc.

Winners receive prizes up to $150 and recognition on our website. Winners may also be invited to have their work featured in a forthcoming departmental publication of student work.

Awards will be given in three categories: 100 level, 200 level, and 300-400 level.

Submissions will be judged based upon how well they demonstrate rhetorical, genre, and discourse community knowledge in alignment with the learning outcomes as articulated in general and at each level. (Review Learning Outcomes)

Special recognitions may be awarded to outstanding submissions in the following categories:

• multimodal submissions that effectively utilize audio, visual, or other modes of communication
• reflections that demonstrate metacognitive knowledge by engaging deeply with the learning outcomes, especially writing process knowledge

Winners will be selected by a committee of faculty in the Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition. Winners will be notified prior to the end of the Spring 2025 semester.

Submission Guidelines for Students:

• Submissions will be accepted until the end of the day on Friday, February 21, 2025; early submissions are encouraged.
• The submission portal will ask you to provide some basic information such as name, student ID#, contact information, submission title, course, semester, and instructor.
• Wherever possible, remove from your submission identifying information such as your name and your instructor’s name. Exceptions include certain multimodal submissions that may be exceedingly difficult or impossible to anonymize.
• Upload submissions in commonly accessible formats (e.g. Microsoft Office, PDF, WAV and MP3 for audio; MP4 for video). You may provide a link for web-based submissions and files larger than 50MB, but please make sure you double-check that your link is active and permissions are set to allow anyone to view.
• You may revise your work prior to submission.
• You are permitted to submit multiple works if you took multiple WTNG courses, although you are limited to one submission from each course. You will need to complete the submission process separately for each submission.
• You are welcome and encouraged to submit collaborative work, but all coauthors must consent to submitting, and the prize money for any winning collaborative submission will be split evenly among the coauthors.
• You are welcome and encouraged—but not required—to include a reflection that addresses the course learning outcomes, especially writing process knowledge. Reflections may be used by the awards selection committee to better evaluate your submission within the context in which it was written, and outstanding reflections may be considered separately from the submission for special recognition. You may submit a reflection you already wrote for the course or a new or revised one. While reflections should refrain from mentioning professors by name, they may discuss pertinent details such as the course, assignment, and professor feedback.

Nomination Guidelines for Faculty:

• Nominations will be accepted until the end of the day on Friday, February 7, 2025.
• Nominated students will be contacted by the awards selection chair, informed that they have been nominated, and invited to submit.
• Students are nominated for specific works produced as part of a WTNG course, not in general.
• You may nominate any number of students from any WTNG course you taught during the 2024 calendar year, you may submit multiple student nominations at the same time, and you may complete the nomination form any number of times, but you will need to complete a new nomination form for different groups of students from different classes and/or semesters. Nominations from sections can be submitted at the same time so long as the course and semester are the same (e.g. all from Spring 2024 WTNG 102).
• The nomination portal will ask you to provide your name, email, course, semester, student name(s), student email(s), and relevant assignment name(s).

Ready to Submit or Nominate?

ACCESS THE SUBMISSION AND NOMINATION PORTAL

Questions?

Contact writingcontest@rwu.edu