{"id":12478,"date":"2015-12-16T15:18:46","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T20:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=12478"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:09:25","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:09:25","slug":"maryturnerlane-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=12478","title":{"rendered":"English professor wins Mary Turner Lane Award"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Connie<\/a>
Connie Eble<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A<\/span>t a campus coffee shop, Connie Eble observed that a stack of coffee cup sleeves had been labeled \u201ccomfort grips,\u201d a new term to her. As a professional collector of American slang, she notices things like that.<\/p>\n

Now she\u2019s the one being recognized.<\/p>\n

Eble, professor of English and comparative literature, has won the 2016 Mary Turner Lane Award, which recognizes a woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the lives of women on the Carolina campus.<\/p>\n

The Association for Women Faculty and Professionals presented the award Dec. 9 at its holiday gathering. The award, usually given in the spring, will be presented in the winter from now on.<\/p>\n

Eble joined the Carolina faculty in 1971, after earning both her master\u2019s and doctorate in English here. She received her bachelor\u2019s degree from St. Mary\u2019s Dominican College in New Orleans. A linguist who teaches Old English and the history of the English language, Eble pioneered the serious and systematic study of college slang. She has cataloged and analyzed slang as spoken by UNC students for the past 42 years. She shared her findings in the books \u201cSlang and Sociability\u201d (1996) and \u201cCollege Slang 101\u201d (2003).<\/p>\n

When she was hired at Carolina, Eble noticed something about her faculty colleagues. She was the only woman in a tenure-track faculty position in a department of 60 male professors and three women lecturers in creative writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cConnie Eble is one of the longest-serving women faculty members still active at UNC,\u201d Joy Kasson, recently retired professor and former chair of the American studies department, wrote in her nomination of Eble for the award. \u201cShe was a pioneer for women in the English department, which, prior to her appointment in 1971, had no tenure-track female faculty members despite large numbers of women students and graduate students.\u201d<\/p>\n

To address the gender imbalance and to respond to the protests of female graduate students, in fall 1971 the department hired 10 women as fixed-term instructors, Eble said. Two of those, Kasson and Margaret Anne O\u2019Connor, moved to tenure-track positions within a couple of years.<\/p>\n

Yet, six years later, when Eble\u2019s tenure was being voted on, only one woman was part of the long approval process \u2013 the lone female member of the Board of Trustees. The University has made great strides since then, Eble said. The College of Arts and Sciences has had four female deans, Molly Corbett Broad served as president of the UNC system and Carol L. Folt is the University\u2019s first woman chancellor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Policies have improved, too. A nepotism rule used to prevent faculty couples from working in the same department; now spousal hiring is encouraged as a recruitment tool. Maternity leave was not available for female instructors, and no temporary replacements were hired while the instructor was out. \u201cWe just covered your classes,\u201d Eble said, recalling a colleague who returned to teaching only two weeks after giving birth.<\/p>\n

Class offerings have become more diverse, too, with the creation of a women\u2019s (now gender) studies department and courses focused on the work of women writers.<\/p>\n

\u201cConnie has always been mindful of the needs and special contributions of women in her own department and across the campus,\u201d Kasson said. \u201cBack in the day when proposing a course on \u2018women in literature\u2019 was still controversial, Connie championed the need to expand her department\u2019s offerings and make the university more friendly to women at all levels.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Eble was one of the founders of the Association for Women Faculty (predecessor to AWFP) and has served on committees such as the executive committee of the Faculty Council (2004\u201307), the committee on appointments, promotion and tenure (2008\u201310) and currently the committee on university government. She twice served as chair of the humanities division.<\/p>\n

She has also been a mentor and a role model, to men as well as women, a male colleague wrote in his nomination letter. \u201cThough the term \u2018role model\u2019 is overused, she has been just that to women at UNC \u2013 and not just women. Many men look up to her. I count myself first among that rank. She has been an invaluable interlocutor and professional resource,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI offer my strongest recommendation that Connie Eble be awarded the AWFP Mary Turner Lane Award. She\u2019s invaluable and terrific.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eble, who is teaching her last semester full time before going into phased retirement, said she appreciated the award very much, although \u201cin the advancement of women, I have not been a real leader,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been in the trenches.\u201d<\/p>\n

Receiving the award has made her reflect on how far women have come, how far they still have to go and how many of the gains made since the 1970s are taken for granted now. \u201cI\u2019ve really been thinking about it since they told me I won this award and thinking how much things have changed,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to act as if everything is just fine right now because I still think if you ever let your guard down, we\u2019ll go backwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mary Turner Lane award, established in 1986, is named for one of the group\u2019s founders, the late Mary Turner Lane, who was an associate professor emerita of education and became first director of Women\u2019s Studies in 1976.<\/span><\/p>\n

By Susan Hudson, Gazette<\/a><\/em><\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English professor Connie Eble received the 2016 Mary Turner Lane Award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,2105,98,36,38,39,40],"class_list":["post-12478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-carolina","tag-connie-eble","tag-english-and-comparative-literature","tag-unc","tag-unc-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-unc-chapel-hill","tag-university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47562,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12478\/revisions\/47562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}