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Earlier this week, J. Blake Scott, Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida, delivered the annual Walker Gibson lecture. His talk, titled, "Theory Building with Participants in RHM" addressed how scholars in rhetoric, particularly those focused on the rhetorics of health and medicine (RHM), take up theory-building as a form of care. He also discussed these concepts in conversation with his project examining provider-enacted HIV stigma.

During his visit, Scott met with graduate students in Composition and Rhetoric, offering mentorship, advice, and insight about developing as scholars within the field and publishing their work. PhD student Jeremy Levine said, "It was wonderful to hear about how Dr. Scott is doing focused work to make the work of rhetoric both more applicable to those outside the academy, and creating more opportunities and structures for graduate students to participate in the work of the field. During his talks, I often found myself saying, 'I want to do something like that someday.'"

After Scott's lecture, Levine was recognized as this year's winner of the Walker Gibson Prize. The Walker Gibson Prize is awarded annually to the best graduate student essay on a topic in composition and rhetoric written in an English Department seminar during the preceding year. He received the prize for his paper, “The College Board’s Composition Tests and the Rise of the Writing Sample, 1942-1964," which was composed in professor David Fleming's course, Writing in Colleges and Universities: Histories of Composition-Rhetoric in the U.S., in Spring 2019.