2004-05 ACE Writing SIG Goals
1. Poll the SIG membership about judges for the C&A (for problems and suggestions), secure an excellent judging panel and inform them one-on-one about our judging expectations/needs, especially covering any recent problem spots we’ve had. Judges were to be selected by the end of September.
2. Poll the SIG membership about changes to the C&A writing categories, have the SIG leadership evaluate any suggestions received, and make any changes deemed necessary. Those changes, if any, were to be in a report to the ACE VP by October 1.
3. Plan a Super Workshop on topics related to writing for the fall of 2005 or later. Iowa ACE and Mississippi ACE groups have stated an interest in doing this. Mississippi has volunteered to host the event (the weather in Mississippi is supposed to be nice in October). We plan to partner with another SIG to share the costs, to increase attendance, and to vary the offerings. We have the ISU Workshop budget provided by the ISU ACE chapter and know that we will need to obtain sponsors in order to offer this workshop at an affordable fee. We also plan to consult as many football schedules as possible when selecting a date.
Mississippi ACE proposes the University of Mississippi at Oxford as a possible site. They have made some contacts and report that Ole Miss has an outstanding new performing arts center that also has conference facilities at a reasonable cost. Oxford is home to a Mississippi public radio program, "Thacker Mountain Radio," produced on Monday nights at Square Books (would be a great outing). They have blue grass, blues, folk, etc., bands and usually a reading by a nationally known author. Oxford also has “Rowan Oak,” William Faulkner’s home, as well as several other sites that figure in his novels.
For the writing portion of the workshop, we plan to secure an expert author willing to lead some sessions. Finding an expert who is willing, available, and fits our budget will determine whether we can make this happen. Two suggestions are Bob Wolf, who led part of the writing workshop at Iowa State, and Stephen Wilbers (www.wilbers.com), an author, a newspaper columnist, and faculty member at the University of Minnesota.
We need to have this well enough along so that we can promote it at the ACE International Conference in San Antonio.
4. Offer one special Writing Experience/Workshop at San Antonio --something akin to what we did at Tahoe -- or at Mahoney State Park in Nebraska (an area workshop) -- or at Asilomar. We had some suggestions offered by our Texas members. The SIG leadership will research ideas and speakers, invite the Texas conference planners to give us more input, and make the contacts to secure the workshop speaker/leader.
5. Present a SIG Award of Excellence if nominations merit it. Our deadlines include: send a description of our selection process to the ACE VP by Jan. 28, have nominations submitted by Feb. 18, and send the name of our proposed winner to the ACE VP and coordinator by Feb. 28.
6. Encourage more participation in the C&A winners poster session at San Antonio. Participation was really down at Tahoe. We would like to see more examples from the writing SIG winners. Perhaps we will promote the poster session through e-mails to the winners.
7. Update the Writing SIG Web pages and encourage SIG usage. We planned to have something in every category by September or early October. We also planned to add a Writing SIG blog, similar to the one created by the Distance Education SIG.
8. Offer an online writing course, if we have the interest and can find leadership for the project.
9. Encourage SIG members to conduct workshops or suggest workshops for San Antonio.
One suggestion is a session on the differences between newswriting and magazine writing, with an emphasis on magazines. A possible outside session presenter is a member of the Ole Miss journalism department, Samir Husni, who is a nationally recognized authority on magazines.
