Creative writing doctoral student Dorothy Chan and rhetoric and composition doctoral student Amy Cicchino shared the 2018-19 Bertam and Ruth Davis Award for Outstanding Career as a Graduate Student. After the ceremony, both spoke highly of each other and talked about their time in the English department.

Chan spent almost the entirety of her graduate career working with The Southeast Review, the graduate literary journal at FSU. She was a reader, art editor, assistant editor, and editor in chief for the journal. She also has won numerous awards for her poetry during her time at FSU.

“I think the four years went by really fast—I just can’t believe I’ve been working on The Southeast Review very seriously since the second semester of my first year,” she said, during the post-ceremony reception in the newly renovated Williams Building courtyard. “I look at this award in the context of my career and how much I have been able to achieve and I’m really proud of it, especially within both my publishing and my editing.

“The amount of heart that not only the editor in chief and the assistant editor but the entire masthead put in the journal is astounding.”

Beginning in the fall of 2019, Chan will be an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She says she owes much of her success at FSU to the guidance she has received from her dissertation co-directors David Kirby and Barbara Hamby, personal qualities she will carry to her next stop.

“Today was a great day not only because of the awards ceremony but also because we were able to celebrate and get a glimpse of David’s 50 years here,” she says. “The backbone of the creative writing program is the mentorship, so I would like to take that level of mentorship away with me to Wisconsin.”

Cicchino rounded out her doctoral studies in writing program administration and digital composition and pedagogy with professional experience that included graduate assistant editor for WPA: Writing Program Administration and Writing Program Administration Graduate Organization committee member. She also served on several other university committees and organizations, in addition to her work as an FSU Reading/Writing Center and Digital Studio tutor and College Composition program mentor.

“Winning this award is so special because of the wonderful community we have at FSU, and to be recognized by the community is incredible, it’s such a gift,” Cicchino said. Cicchino also won the department's Fred L. Standley Award for Excellence in Teaching College Composition. She leaves FSU after graduation in May 2019 to become Associate Director of the Writing Program at Auburn University.

“As an administrator, I will take everything I learned from my major professor, Dr. Kathleen Yancey, Deborah Coxwell-Teague and Dr. Kristie Fleckenstein and Dr. Michael Neal, and the wonderful department administration we have at FSU,” she says. “I’m certainly going to take all of the great lessons I’ve learned from my students and my professors. I am like a sponge that has absorbed all of the water here and I’m going to carry it to Auburn.”