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Michael Day wins Technology Innovator Award

June 7, 2011
Michael Day

Michael Day

NIU English professor Michael Day has received the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Technology Innovator Award.

Day, director of NIU’s First Year Composition Program, received the award at the 2011 Computers and Writing Conference at the University of Michigan.

“It was a pleasant surprise,” he said. “It’s a significant award in my field of expertise.”

Day works in the Department of English, where he teaches graduate-level classes on digital rhetoric, technical communication and the teaching of college writing. Many of his students go on to careers in teaching writing, where they share the same expertise in digital communication with their students.

The national CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication gives the Technology Innovator Award annually to teacher/scholars who have made significant and longstanding contributions to the field of computer-mediated writing instruction.

Committee members recognized Day for his two decades of work mentoring graduate students and faculty, advocating through national organizations and writing relevant scholarly articles on using computers to teach composition.

When Day was hired, said Robert Self, emeritus professor of English, the department already had developed the infrastructure and support staff for using computers and the Internet in writing classes.

“But we wanted a colleague with professional expertise in this work who could integrate and maximize these investments and bring our pedagogy, our curriculum, our effectiveness and our national visibility to sustained recognition,” Self said.

“Day joined us with the experience, the knowledge and the willingness to undertake this effort. His receipt of the Technology Innovator Award from the CCCC at the recent Computers and Writing conference strongly recognizes his success in developing the strength of our graduate program in rhetoric, in enhancing the instruction of computer-mediated writing, and in guiding our students’ development as teachers of first-year composition.”