Dana Driscoll (English, Writing Center) and Omar Yacoub (August 2023 graduate from the Composition and Applied Linguistics Doctoral program and former assistant director of the Jones White Writing Center) won a major article award for their 2022 article, “Threshold Genres; A 10-Year Exploration of a Medical Writer’s Development and Social Apprenticeship through the Patient SOAP Note.”
Their article won the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum and WAC Clearinghouse’s Best WAC Article Focused on Research Award, which identifies an exceptional research study to further the practice and teaching of writing across the curriculum. The award was awarded at the AWAC Conference over the summer.
From the Award Website
“Comments from the Selection Committee: Driscoll and Yacoub’s contribution in their article to a disciplinary understanding of threshold genre is significant. “Threshold Genres: A 10-Year Exploration of a Medical Writer’s Development and Social Apprenticeship Through the Patient SOAP Note” reports on a case study—the longest longitudinal study in the field. The authors share insights into the participant’s experiences developing writing expertise over a ten-year span, beginning with first-year composition, to novice medical student, and, ultimately, to that of expert medical practitioner. The authors argue that the SOAP note serves as a dynamic, required genre for the participant’s mastery of professional thinking and practice. Driscoll and Yacoub make a compelling case for longitudinal threshold genre research as a means of deepening our understanding of how and why writing expertise develops over time. View the article in Written Communication on the Sage Journals website.”