Southern Miss Gulf Coast English Professor Honored

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Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Gulfport – A University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast English professor has been honored for her work on a project designed to help local school teachers with writing instruction that combines science and art.

Dr. Elaine White, founder of the Live Oak Writing Project at Southern Miss Gulf Coast, recently received a Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher Award for 2006 and on Thursday will make a presentation on the project titled “Looking at Science Through the Lens of Art” at 7 p.m., Room 138-L at the Southern Miss Gulf Coast Student Services Center. A reception will follow.

“We’re looking at ways to improve instruction overall, while creating a place-based curriculum design that is more of a total approach to teaching science and writing,” said White, who serves as coordinator for the Southern Miss Gulf Coast Department of English.

Founded by White in 2001, the Live Oak Writing Project (LOWP) has been a collaborative program of Southern Miss Gulf Coast and Mississippi coastal schools dedicated to improving writing and the teaching of writing at all grades and across all disciplines. The project focuses on the teaching of writing for practicing teachers while providing a model for ongoing professional development that builds independent local programs.

The LOWP is affiliated with the National Writing Project, which works with school teachers to help improve their writing and their teaching of writing at the national level.

The LOWP’s science and art writing project incorporates the artwork of renowned coast artist Walter Anderson and is supported by Anderson’s family and the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, along with the Coast Impact Protection Agency, NASA and the National Council of Teachers of English.

“We plan to have staff development programs for area schools based on the project, and eventually we want to share this work with colleagues in the National Writing Project and have a national audience for it,” White said. “Plus it gives us the opportunity to share the work of a great Mississippi artist with the rest of the country.”

For more information on the Live Oak Writing Project, call 228.867.2622 or visit http://www.usm.edu/liveoak/.