The winner of the 2017 Thesis of the Year award is Kate Oscarson for her paper “What’s so Super about Superman? Heroes and the Quest for Perfection.” All theses completed for ENGL 599 Master’s Thesis Tutorial courses during the summer and fall of 2016 and spring of 2017 were eligible for the Thesis of the Year title this year. The final paper is selected by program faculty who have no thesis students’ papers in the running, and who read over drafts of papers from which the authors’ names as well as mentor’s names have been removed. The award allows the student to list this honor on her or his curriculum vitae (CV). A thesis of the year award is something common to MA English programs and does hold weight on a CV, particularly if a person applies to PhD programs or to jobs within the field. So congratulations, Kate! We will begin a new cycle of consideration starting this summer.

It’s always good to hear from our MA graduates and find out what they’re up to. I recently heard from Kensie Poor, who completed her MA degree with us here in 2013. It’s possible that a few of our current students (those moving at a part-time pace, or who took leave over the past few years) may date back to Kensie’s years and remember her. In any case I am happy to share that she has been accepted into the University of Georgia’s PhD English program. Well done, Kensie! Anyone else, current or former students, who want to share with me and the program any similar news or announcements, scholarship activity, or other academic achievements, please do drop me a line at cloots@mercy.edu.

The MA program is undergoing what’s called a program self-study. It’s something that all programs at accredited institutions do on a periodic basis. At Mercy we do this process every five years. It involves a number of steps, one of which is an external reviewer (meaning an English faculty member from a different graduate English program) taking a look at every aspect of our program and writing up an evaluation of us. An external reviewer usually wants to talk to a few students to get their take on their MA program. This can include current students and alumni.

So, I’m looking for volunteers to be included on a list of potential contacts for our external reviewer. If you are in the program or have graduated from the program and would like to be on the list, please drop me an email at cloots@mercy.edu indicating your preferred contact method (phone or email) and preferred contact info. I’m looking for as many volunteers as possible. External reviewers usually only reach out to two or three students, but the more volunteers the reviewer has to pick from, the better. Thanks in advance to anyone who volunteers. -CL

For anyone who might be in the Hudson Valley/New York City  area on Thursday, February 25, the College’s Honors Program is hosting a book discussion and pizza dinner in Dobbs Ferry, the village in which Mercy College’s main campus is located. The book under discussion is Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. Lee passed away today, 2/19, and so this will also surely involve people sharing other reflections on their experiences with Lee’s work. The Dobbs Ferry Public Library and Mercy College have long collaborated in a “Town & Gown” series bringing together college faculty, students, and community residents. Everyone is welcome, and in particular English literature students of both graduate and undergraduate level are encouraged to attend. Click here to RSVP for this event.

I have sad news to share with you all: Jill Inmon, a grad student in our MA program, has recently passed away. Jill expressed to me on different occasions how much she valued her time in the program, how excited she was to be pursuing her graduate degree with all of you, and how she admired all of you, her peers in her courses. Some of you took classes with Jill, exchanged ideas with her, knew her to various degree. If any of you would like to send a thought in memory of Jill or a message of condolence to Jill’s mother, please send it to me at cloots@mercy.edu. I will put your messages together into one letter and mail it to Jill’s mother on behalf of the graduate English students. Best, -CL

We here in the MA faculty often wonder what our MA grads are up to, where you are in the world, what you’re doing (whether with the MA degree, or otherwise). A number of former students do keep in touch with some professors, and each of you should always be trying to build some rapport with at least one of your professors, if even just for the practical reasons that (a) you’ll need to pick one of us to lead your final 599 thesis course, and (b) you should have at least one faculty member to turn to with professional questions and concerns after your time in the program. But on the program-level I’d like to build a better alumni-relations system, something by which we here can get and maintain a sense of what our graduate community is up to. One immediate reason is that the Mercy College School of Liberal Arts in which our program is housed is starting up a newsletter and wants to be able to list some alumni news; for another thing, the MA program itself might in the future put together its own alumni newsletter if we can get a large enough response to this call.

So, if you’re a graduate of the MA program, do me a favor and keep in touch. At the very least it would be good to have updated contact information for each of you. Beyond that we’d love to hear about anything you’re doing or achieving or working on beyond the MA. Have you gone on to a PhD program? Earned a PhD? Are you teaching anywhere whether part time or full time be it in K-12, community college, or beyond? Finished or published any poems, stories, or critical essays? Written a book? Done any stage performance? Read aloud at a spoken-word event? Any other professional or non-professional accomplishments to note? Drop me an email, now or at anytime in the future, at cloots@mercy.edu and do let me know. At the very least I’ll finally be able to answer when this or that professor asks me in the hall “hey what have our MA graduates been up to lately?” We want to know!