TYCA Conference SPEAKERs

Opening Plenary Speaker: Paul Heilker, PH.D. Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Ph.D. Program in Rhetoric and Writing at Virginia Tech. Dr Heilker has extensive study and experience in first year composition and is a wonderful speaker. He has a new book being published in September of 2011. Keywords in Writing Studies.  Edited with Peter Vandenberg.  Under contract with Utah State University Press.  He will also be holding a pre conference workshop on expectations and challenges for first year composition in both two and four year colleges.

Main Luncheon Speaker: Michael D’Orso  
Mike D'Orso's work includes fifteen books, all in the form of narrative nonfiction. His subjects range from politics to professional football, from racial conflict to environmental destruction, from inner-city public education to social justice to spinal cord injury. The settings for his books range from Arctic Alaska to the Galapagos Islands to the swamps of rural Florida. His most recent book is Eagle Blue, (Bloomsbury, March, 2007).

Honors for Mike's work include the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the New York Times Notable Book of the Year list, Newsweek Magazine's 2009 list of "50 Books For Our Times," the American Library Association's Alex Award, the Lillian Smith Book Award for writing on social justice, the Christopher Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the American Library Association's Nonfiction Book of the Year, and selection among the New York Public Library's "25 Best Books of the Year." Seven of Mike's books have been bestsellers. Three have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Mike's work has been featured or reviewed in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek, Forbes, Outside, Cosmopolitan, Audubon, Reader's Digest, Business Week, People, and The Oxford American magazines, as well as in numerous major metropolitan newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. He has appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," C-Span's "Book TV," MSNBC and numerous National Public Radio programs, including Michael Feldman's "Whad'Ya Know?"
He is currently working with actor/activist Ted Danson on a book titled OCEANA: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them, to be published by Rodale press in April of 2011.   www.mikedorso.com/

Closing Speaker:

Dr. Timothy B. Bostic, Assistant Professor of English, received a Ph.D. in Education, Instructional Leadership in 2006 from Virginia Commonwealth University, a Teacher Certification in Secondary Education, English in 1995 from Virginia Wesleyan College, and an M.A. in Humanities and a B.A. in Speech Communication and Theatre Arts, in 1995 and 1993 respectively, from Old Dominion University. He has been a Research Associate in the Program for Research and Evaluation in Public Schools for the Old Dominion University Research Foundation and Director of Composition and Coordinator of Secondary English Teacher preparation at Old Dominion University. Co Author with Maike Ingrid Philipsen of Work-Life Balance. The Path Toward Family Friendly Institutions.