National teachers council honors Erika Lindemann

Erika Lindemann, associate dean for undergraduate curricula at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has received the 2011 Distinguished Service Award from the National Council of Teachers of English.

Lindemann, who received her master’s and doctoral degrees from Carolina, also is an adjunct professor of English in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. Much of her research involves translating scholarship about writing and its teaching into curricula and teacher training programs.

She wrote the groundbreaking “A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers” (Oxford University Press), now in its fourth edition and still in print after 30 years. Her most recent project is an online scholarly edition of UNC student James Lawrence Dusenbery’s 1840-1841 journal (http://docsouth.unc.edu/dusenbery/).

The national council, based in Urbana, Ill., is devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and language arts at all levels of education. The Distinguished Service Award is given for valuable professional service, including scholarly and academic distinction, distinguished use of language and excellence in teaching.

For almost 20 years, Lindemann has been parliamentarian for the council and the Conference on College Composition and Communication, part of the council.

In celebration of the council’s 100th anniversary this year, Lindemann edited the 500-page “Reading the Past, Writing the Future: A Century of American Literacy Education and the National Council of Teachers of English.”

Her nominators for the award wrote, “‘Reading the Past, Writing the Future’ is a landmark work, a meticulously researched volume. … Neither NCTE nor CCCC would have been the same without Erika Lindemann’s intellectual contributions, energy and positive spirit.”

Web site: http://www.ncte.org