Hello everyone!
The Coalition for Community Writing invites nominations for our three awards, which will be presented at the October 23-25 Conference on Community Writing in Detroit.
Distinguished Engaged Scholar in Community Writing Award
Outstanding University/College – Community Project Award
Outstanding Book in Community Writing Award
Nomination criteria are below.
The Distinguished Engaged Scholar in Community Writing Award Committee seeks nominations for an individual who has made a significant and sustained contribution to community writing, which includes scholarship areas such as community literacy, community-based research, ethnography, community publishing, service-learning, and related areas.
Please nominate a practitioner-scholar who could be a community-based writer, 2- or 4-year college or university faculty member, teacher, or administrator with a distinguished publishing record in community writing. Nominees for this award should clearly demonstrate a sustained and exemplary track record of:
1. Writing about, for, with, and as members of impacted communities;
2. Using writing to build and sustain networks of advocacy and support across institutional boundaries such as schools, colleges, neighborhood centers, non-profits, or government agencies;
3. Innovating new methods of fostering community writing in diverse and multimodal contexts;
4. Fostering reciprocal and culturally sensitive projects that “write community”—strengthening social, economic, and cultural bonds constitutive of healthy local or advocacy groups.
Application Instructions
Applications are due by midnight eastern time May 31, 2025. Applications should be submitted as one PDF document via email with subject line Attn: CCW Distinguished Engaged Scholar Committee to the Awards Commitee chair at paula.mathieu according to the following format:
1. Required Information: On a separate page from the award proposal, please include the nominee’s name, institution, department or organization, and email address.
2. A summary of accomplishments of up to 100 words followed by a nomination rationale of no more than 1,000 words that describes the nominee’s accomplishments and addresses the evaluation criteria above.
3. Up to 3 letters of support from students, an academic department chair or organization director, an academic or organization administrator, faculty members or organizational colleagues, a community partner.
4. The nominee’s complete CV.
Evaluation Criteria
Submissions will be evaluated on the extent to which the nominee has demonstrated excellence and impact in the four areas above over a sustained period of time.
The winning Distinguished Engaged Scholar in Community Writing can expect to hear from the award committee by September 1. One award winner for 2025 and one winner for 2026 will be announced at the Awards Ceremony at the Conference on Community Writing in October, 2025.
Outstanding University/ 2- or 4-yr. College/ Community Project Award
The Coalition for Community Writing Outstanding University/College/Community Project Awardhonors high-impact initiatives developed or sustained through university/college-community partnerships that embody a spirit of collaboration and reciprocity. Appropriate projects should build on the strengths and expertise of both college and community partners and meet standards of success developed jointly between college and community partners.
The initiatives may be short- or long-term, and they may be based on service-learning, community-based teaching, and/or community-based research models at two- or four-year institutions such as ethnography and oral storytelling, archival work, data activism, and more. They may include undergraduate-, graduate-, faculty-, and administrative-level contributions to the collaboration with the community. Community partners may include individuals, non-profit organizations having a 501(c)3 status (or comparable status), government agencies (e.g. city schools), and for-profit organizations with philanthropic activities.
Submissions for this award should clearly demonstrate the following: 1) a reciprocal partnership in the process of organizing, running, and evaluating the project; 2) commitment to literacy and/or writing; 3) articulation of clear, useful project outcomes and impacts; and 4) a commitment to sustainability of the partnership, the service-learning model, or the community-based research study.
Application Instructions
Applications are due by midnight eastern time May 31, 2025. Applications should be submitted as one PDF document via email with the subject heading ATTN: CCW Project Award to paula.mathieu according to the following format:
1. Required Information: On a separate page from the award proposal, please include the applicant’s name(s), institution(s), department(s), title of project, and project duration; name and email address of a primary contact with the community partner(s) who has submitted a letter of support (one letter from one community partner is sufficient); name and email address of a primary contact with the university or college who has submitted a letter of support.
2. A typed, double-spaced project description of no more than 1,000 words that describes the project and addresses the evaluation criteria above. Applications that exceed 1,000 words will not be considered.
3. A letter of support from one of the community partners involved in the project that addresses the quality of the project.
4. Optional: A letter of support from the applicant’s college that addresses the quality of the project. This letter may come from the submitter’s academic department chair, an academic administrator who was involved with or granted approval to the project, or an official who works for an administrative body associated with the project.
5. Optional: A letter of support from a student and/or additional community member that addresses the quality of the project.
Evaluation Criteria
Submissions will be evaluated based on the following:
1. The significance of the project to the community partner’s work, as indicated by the project outcomes and the support letter from the partner; the significance of the project to the mission and goals of the college and/or program/department, as indicated by the project outcomes and the optional support letter from the college and/or student.
2. The articulation of the connection between the project and community writing, which includes genres such as community literacy, service-learning, community-based research, ethnography, community publishing, and advocacy and activist writing.
3. The articulation of a thorough and reciprocal method of process, or if the project includes empirical work, rigorous research methods (including the coding and analyzing of data) appropriate to the project, the applicant’s discipline, and the community partner.
4. The quality of the project description, including clarity of the general conception, goals, organization, and results.
The winning applicant and runner-up applicant can expect to hear from the award committee by September 1. The award winners will be announced at the online Conference on Community Writing in October, 2025.
Outstanding Book in Community Writing Award
The Coalition for Community Writing is pleased to accept nominations for its Outstanding Book Award. The CCW Outstanding Book Award originated in 2017 and is presented biennially for the most outstanding book in community writing, which includes the areas of service learning, community-based research, community literacy, ethnography and memoir, community publishing, and related areas. The winning applicant and runner-up applicant can expect to hear from the awards committee by September 15, 2025. The award winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony at the Conference on Community Writing on October 12, 2025.
Eligible books will be situated within the broad, historical traditions of rhetoric and composition, literacy studies, and related disciplines and should substantially draw on and/or contribute to scholarship about, for, with, and by local or global communities. The award committee will consider both print and digital monographs, as well as edited collections.
Eligibility: A work eligible for the 2025 award will have been published in print or digitally in calendar years 2024-2025.
Nominations must be received by May 31, 2025 and must name the title, author(s), and publisher, and include a brief letter of nomination (no more than one double-spaced page) on the book’s contribution to community writing. Self-nominations and press nominations are accepted. Please send the nomination letter by email with the subject line ATTN: CCW Outstanding Book Award Committee at paula.mathieu.
Best,
Veronica
Veronica House, Ph.D.
University Writing Program
2150 E. Evans Ave, AAC 282
University of Denver
Denver, CO 80210
Founding CEO & Executive Director, Coalition for Community Writing
Founding Director, Conference on Community Writing
Co-Editor, Community Literacy Journal
Pronouns: she/ her/ hers
The University of Denver resides on lands that were stolen from the Cheyenne and Southern Arapaho tribes, and DU’s founder John Evans was involved in the Sand Creek Massacre. I acknowledge and honor the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and all of the original Indigenous peoples of these lands. I commit to ongoing learning and support of Indigenous-led farms and organizations doing wonderful work in the community such as Frontline Farming and First Nations Development Institute.