Rebecca Pope-Ruark, associate professor of English, earned two awards at the international Association for Business Communication (ABC) conference in New Orleans in late October.
Pope-Ruark earned the inaugural Association Rising Star Award for her service to the organization in her first 10 years of membership. She has served as a director-at-large on the Board of Directors for four years, chaired the Graduate Studies and Marketing committees, led a workgroup in the last strategic planning session, created proposals and travel awards to better support graduate students and junior faculty in their field, and chaired several ad hoc committees at the request of the Board. Graduate student membership is up significantly in part to her efforts to draw Board and membership attention to supporting the future members of the discipline.
Pope-Ruark also earned the 2013 Outstanding Article of the Year in Business Communication Quarterly Award for her work introducing and connecting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) to the discipline of business and professional communication.
Pope-Ruark has been an active member of ABC for 10 years, holding various service positions, including her recently concluded four-year term as a director-at-large on the Board of Directors. She teaches courses in Professional Writing and Rhetoric in the Department of English.