Angelina College instructors are offering rewards for excellent writers!

Open to both college and high school students, the Student Writing Excellence contest will award cash prizes for works composed for English classes:

The contest is open to all English students enrolled at Angelina College, but there’s also a separate category for area high school students from the 32 schools within the college’s 13-county service area.

“If the student has completed a junior or senior English class – even if they’re not a dual-credit student – he or she can enter something they’ve written for that class,” Renee Williams, AC English instructor, said. “Even if they’re not planning to attend AC, they’re still part of our community and we want to help them display their skills.”

“I think our entire community will be very proud of its students.”

The criteria for submissions include any work written for an English class during the 2019 calendar year and for which students already have received a grade. The four categories include Freshman Composition (anything written for an ENGL1301 or 1302 course); Research Argument (written at the end of one of the aforementioned courses); Literary Analysis (typically written for a sophomore-level English class); and High School works.

Each level of submissions will offer prizes of $250 for first place, $150 for second place and $100 for third place. In March, AC’s English faculty – the judges for the contest – will host an awards banquet to recognize participants. In addition, Williams said the hope is to have all entries published and displayed in the Angelina College library.

Judging for the contest will take place from Feb. 29 through March 14. The awards banquet is scheduled for Saturday, March 21 on the AC campus.

Students may submit their own work, or teachers may submit on the student’s behalf, using the on-line submission form located on the Angelina College web site under “Roadrunner News.”

“We have a lot of students passing through our English courses, and we wanted to acknowledge their achievements and kind of celebrate their works in academic writing,” Williams said. “A lot of people don’t really care for academic writing, so we thought maybe attaching some prestige to it would build some enthusiasm.

“We’d love to see students getting excited about English classes.”

For further information, contact Renee Williams at rwilliams@angelina.edu

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Sports Information Director Gary Stallard, who also serves as a Liberal Arts Instructor, begins his eleventh season with Angelina College. Following a career as a U.S. Marine, Stallard completed his bachelor’s degree at Stephen F. Austin University, where he majored in English and Journalism. For more than 16 years, he has worked as a sports writer/columnist/photographer for the Lufkin Daily News; he continues to contribute free-lance articles on occasion. Stallard has won several awards for writing, including the Golden Hoops Award for basketball writing in 2003, Regional Sports Writer of the Year in 2004, and the Texas Press Association’s first-place award for column writing in 2007 and in 2014. He has also done basketball, football and baseball radio and live streaming play-by- play and color commentary for an ESPN affiliate. Currently Stallard serves as play-by-play broadcaster for AC basketball, baseball and softball games. Prior to arriving at Angelina College, Stallard taught English at Lufkin High School for four years. He currently teaches Developmental Writing classes at AC. He and his wife Susan live in Lufkin.