Moorer receives the Sally Wilson Award
Goodman Campus English instructor Chad Moorer received one of the faculty's highest honors on May 1 during the Goodman Campus Awards and Honors Banquet – the Sally Wilson Distinguished Educator Award chosen by the student body from the Goodman Campus.
The Sally Wilson Distinguished Educator Award recognizes an outstanding educator from the Goodman Campus for his or her excellence in Phi Theta Kappa's hallmarks of fellowship, leadership, scholarship and service. The award, named for the Kappa Alpha's first and longtime advisor, the late Mrs. Sally Wilson, is based on the following criteria: the instructor encourages students to learn and enjoy the learning process through innovative teaching techniques; the instructor provides guidance, inspiration, support and motivation to students in and out of the classroom; and the instructor exemplifies honesty, integrity, excellence, dedication and leadership.
"I was surprised and honored just to be nominated," Moorer said. "Given the quality instructors who are my colleagues, I was even more surprised to win. It means a lot to me that students considered me for this award.
"I knew that I had been nominated, and it didn't take very long for Jason Kelly to start mentioning things that could only apply to me," he said. "It still took a while for it to register that I had won."
Moorer said he prides himself in keeping his classroom environment open to lively discussions and tries to make complex academic ideas understandable. "We always serve students from a wide variety of backgrounds," Moorer explained. "This semester, I had a really good group who came together to my Comp. II class after being in my Comp. I classes. They have been a fun group to work with these past two semesters.
"I really try to use my background to demystify parts of the writing process and simplify things for students. At the same time, it is also important to challenge them to creatively solve problems on their own. If they don't learn how they get through their own writing process, the lessons from Composition classes won't carry forward. Our real goal is to make our students into capable writers for their professional lives."
Moorer came to Holmes Community College in Fall 2012 and has taught English Composition I and II, development courses, Creative Writing I and II and American Literature II. He has served as director and assistant director of the Goodman Campus Writing Center since its development in Fall 2015.
Prior to Holmes, he served as an adjunct English instructor at both Holmes Community College and Hinds Community College. He also served as an English tutor and monitor at Hinds, a freelance commercial writer, graduate teaching assistant at the University of Alabama and an assistant poetry editor for the Black Warrior Review in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Moorer is from Clinton and received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and is an honors graduate of Rhodes College in Memphis, TN with a BA in English: Writing. During his education, he studied internationally at both Tuebingen Universitaet in Tuebingen, Germany, and at Gonville and Caius College of Cambridge University, England.
Moorer's honors include: University of Alabama Teaching Writing Fellowship in Poetry, University of Alabama Graduate Teaching Assistantship, UNH Cambridge Summer Program Scholarship, Rhodes College University Scholarship, National Merit Scholarship, Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship, Sigma Tau Delta and Rhodes College SEARCH Advisory Board.
His professional affiliations include: Two-Year College English Association-Southeast; Two-Year College English Association of Mississippi Executive Committee member; Mississippi Community College Creative Writing Association Executive Committee member and past president; and Transitioning to College Writing Conference attendee.
