Faculty Trio Awarded

ECU recognized three professors for their scholarly work March 2.

Mitchelson, Liza Weiland and Van Scott.

English professor and author Liza Weiland received the Lifetime Research & Creative Activity Award. Her latest novel, “Paris 7 A.M.” (2019, Simon & Schuster) focuses on a three week stretch during the life of poet Elizabeth Bishop in Paris. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts among others and received the 2017 Robert Penn Warren Prize from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her fiction, poems and essays have appeared in 13 anthologies and more than 40 published magazines and journals.

Ning Zhou, an associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, received the Five-Year Achievement for Research & Creative Activity Award. Her research tests the effectiveness of cochlear implants and how they might depend on the condition a patient’s auditory nerve. Zhou has received more than $2.3 million in research funding, including two National Institutes of Health grants. She received a New Investigator Award from the American Auditory Society in 2014. She’s been an author on more than 35 research articles. She joined ECU in 2013.

Terry Atkinson, an associate professor in the College of Education, received the University Scholarship of Engagement Award. Her research investigates ways to promote literacy in children up to 5 years old. She’s also executive director of the local community literacy coalition READ ENC. Atkinson also received the 2018 Advocacy Award from the United Way of Pitt County.

The event also recognized six faculty members who received patents in 2019: Mark Mannie and Jitka Virag (medicine), Anthony Kennedy (chemistry), Jean-Luc Scemama (biology) and Cheng Chen and Kenneth Jacobs (physics).

Mitchelson, Terry Atkinson and Van Scott