DIGGS TEACHING SCHOLAR AWARDS - 2005

Clare J. Dannenberg specializes in language variation research and is the Director of the Linguistics Speech Lab within the English Department.  Clare has taught various courses, including Language and Society, English Syntax, and Langauge and Gender, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.  Currently, she is working towards the implementation of the Dialect Awareness Curriculum, designed to raise consciousness about language variation and its consequences in United States Englishes for freshman English classes at Virginia Tech and for teachers and students in the Montgomery County School system.  Clare additionally continues to focus her research on how identity for disenfranchised groups in the United States is continually negotiated through language use.

Peter Wallenstein is a professor in history department.  He came to Virginia Tech in 1983, after teaching at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Toronto, and the University of Maryland (in its overseas program, mostly in Japan and Korea).  He teaches Historical Methods (he calls that class the Wallenstein Professional Development Institute) as well as a wide range of other classes, undergraduate and graduate.  A specialist in the history of the U.S. South, he has authored four books and co-authored or co-edited three others.  His publications have brought him three best-article awards, the Sturm Award, and the 2004 Distinguished Scholar award in history from the Virginia Social Science Association.