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Learn more about the fellowship:

The purpose of this fellowship is to attract to our Program the best Ph.D. candidates in Composition and Rhetoric. Specifically, the endowment stipulates that it be awarded to “one or more incoming graduate students in the Department of English, whose special field is the study of Composition and Rhetoric and whose pursuit of further study in the field springs from an interest in classroom teaching.” 

The Fellowship was first endowed in 2006 with a gift from Charlie and Kay Moran and additional gifts from former students and friends. Thanks to continued contributions, including from the Morans and Anne Herrington and Tina Plette, it has continued to grow. When Anne retired, Charlie and Kay proposed renaming the Fund, thereby honoring Charlie and Anne’s many collaborations, including in work with graduate students over the years.

As a recruitment tool, the fellowship offers new students both financial support and time to focus on their studies in that all important first year. About receiving the fellowship, Liane Malinowski has said that “receiving it helped me to feel like I would be a valued member of the community once I was a student here.” Christian Pulver comments that it was “a great honor. Not only did it provide welcome financial support, it also affirmed in me the need for continued research on the impact computer technologies are having on our literacy practices.”

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Recipients of the Moran-Herrington Fellowship 

2024: One recipient

2023: Maryam Amiri, Danyea West, Othniel Williams

2021: Oscar Garcia

2020: One recipient

2019: One recipient

2018: Stacie Klinowski, Jackie Ordway

2017: Ashley Canter, Mikala Jones

2016: Kyle Piscioniere 

2015: Thomas Pickering

2013: Florianne Jimenez, Benjamin Zender

2012: Courtney Gustafson

2010: Travis Grandy 

2009: Jessica Ouellette 

2008: Liane Malinowski

2007: Christopher DiBiase 

2006: Christian Pulver

Anne Herrington, Distinguished Professor of English, Emerita

Anne Herrington

Professor Herrington is the former Chair of the English Department. She is the co-editor, with Charles Moran of the MLA book Writing, Teaching, and Learning in the Disciplines and of Genres Across the Curriculum. She also worked with Marcia Curtis, Charles Moran, and Sara Stelzner to produce the CD-ROM Teaching in Process: Multimedia Resources for Teachers of Writing (Houghton Mifflin). She and Marcia Curtis have authored Persons in Process: Four Stories of Writing and Personal Development in College (NCTE 2000), which was awarded the David H. Russell Prize for Research in Teaching by NCTE. Former Director of the UMass Writing Program, she was active in the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Language and Learning across the Disciplines, and frequently conducted workshops with college and high school teachers on writing-across-the-curriculum models and pedagogy.

Charles Moran (1936–2015), Professor of English, Emeritus

Charles Moran

Professor Moran, with Anne Herrington, co-edited the MLA book Writing, Teaching, and Learning in the Disciplines, and Genres Across the Curriculum. In addition he co-edited, with Elizabeth Penfield, the NCTE book Conversations: Contemporary Critical Theory and the Teaching of Literature, and, with Pat Belanoff, Sheryl Fontaine, and Marcia Dickson, Writing With Elbow. With Gail Hawisher, Cindy Selfe, and Paul LeBlanc he co-authored Computers and the Teaching of American Higher Education, 1979-1994. He worked with Anne Herrington, Marcia Curtis, and Sara Stelzner on the production of the CD-ROM, Teaching in Process. He served on the editorial boards of Computers and Composition, the Journal of Teaching Writing, the Journal of Language and Learning across the Disciplines, academic.writing, and Works and Days.