Two University of Mississippi faculty members were given university awards for teaching, as announced on April 5.

Allen Clark, director of the Arabic Language Flagship program at UM, is the 2025 winner of the Elsie M. Hood Outstanding Teacher Award. 

Established in 1965, the Elsie M. Hood Outstanding Teacher Award seeks to recognize teachers for superior instruction, as nominated by students, faculty and alumni of UM. Winners receive $10,000, a commemorative award plaque and their name engraved in a permanent plaque in the office of the chancellor.

Clark came to the university in 2008 and started the Arabic program. At the time, he was the sole faculty member of the program.

“I used to walk around as the entire program,” Clark said. “There was nobody else in the program, but slowly and steadily we grew the program to the size that it is right now. We went from being nothing at all, square one, to being the number one Arabic Flagship program in the nation, statistically speaking, which is really quite amazing.”

The Ole Miss Arabic Language Flagship Program was established in 2018 due to the Trump administration’s interest in growing human intelligence, Clark said. It is one of three programs in the nation.

“We applied for the Flagship numerous times, and we kept getting turned down,” Clark said. “On the fourth attempt, we ended up getting the Flagship Program. On our fourth attempt, which was in 2018 during Trump’s first administration, they were very interested in growing this idea of having our human intelligence community grow so we could ensure security in terms of intelligence gathering for America.”

Clark further discusses the administration’s development of the language programs as preparation for potential jobs in government by equipping students with cultural and linguistic knowledge.

“They developed three separate programs in order to increase the number of learners that could speak Arabic at a very high level and turn them into hopefully global professionals, is what they called them,” Clark said. “But I think they mostly wanted them to work in the three-letter agencies, state departments and this kind of thing, where they have greater knowledge, not only linguistic knowledge but cultural knowledge as well. They pair them up and they have not just knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) but also dialects. We offer three dialects here and MSA on top of it.”

Clark also emphasized the importance of traveling abroad when learning a new language.

“When you travel abroad and you know you learn all the correct social cues and you’re hyper-aware of the culture around you and you’re speaking like they do in that area, you drop all those effective filters and you have a friend in front of you instead of having some business relationship. An integral part of language learning is traveling abroad,” Clark said. 

For Clark, both language and culture are needed for effective expression.

“You would have certain people, scholars, who would say that it’s not just language and it’s not just culture, but it’s one word — language culture,” Clark said. “Language can’t live on its own and culture embodies language. If you subtract one from the other, it’s sort of like your worldview goes away. You can’t express the things that you want to express.”

Karen Forgette, assistant chair of the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, is the winner of the 2025 St. Amand Outstanding Teaching Award.

Established in 2023, the St. Amand Outstanding Teaching Award recognizes non-tenure track teachers at the university for excellent instruction. Winners receive $10,000 and a commemorative plaque.

Forgette has taught first-year writing courses since she joined the university’s faculty in 2005. Her teaching style emphasizes the importance of students using their voice when writing.

“If you can put these wonderful thoughts that are in your head onto paper or compose it some way digitally, you can compose it in such a way that somebody else understands you and gets you and hears your voice,” Forgette said. “It’s powerful to be able to communicate in that way and particularly to communicate what’s happening in your head. That voice, that agency, that chance to show the world who you are through language is an amazing skill.”

The Department of Writing and Rhetoric teaches students speech communication as well as writing and rhetoric. Students learn about communication to their audiences, Forgette said.

“It’s a wonderfully unique department because not only do we study writing and also rhetoric, but also speech communication,” Forgette said. “Students in our department, students who major in rhetoric really have a chance to think about how great communication happens across a variety of modes for a variety of audiences and also a chance to really unpack what the messages are saying and why they’re effective. I think our department offers you the ability to really think through what it means to have a powerful ethical message?”

Forgette expresses that teaching is not a solitary profession.

“People think of teaching as a solitary profession, but it’s not,” Forgette said. “It’s really a team of people who think about what these students really need at this stage and how can we help them gain those skills. Also, you now build confidence in their own ability to be creative thinkers and to be amazing communicators in the world. It was really that sense of energy among all the colleagues here that excited me about teaching here. It’s a wonderful place to teach.”

With the widespread use of artificial intelligence, Forgette expresses that students need to find their voice and have individuality in their writing.

“One of the things that I try to center in my writing classes is helping students find their own voice,” Forgette said. “We live in an age where we have a lot of tools that are pushing us into sort of a uniform voice or uniform presentation. Think about things like artificial intelligence, social media. They’re kind of set up in a template fashion. I really help students move away from that.”

For Forgette, one of the most fruitful rewards of teaching is watching the growth of her students throughout her class.

“One of my favorite things is no matter where a student perceives himself or how much experience a student had in high school writing, when they come in to watch them grow into themselves, is absolutely one of the best experiences ever,” Forgette said. “The great thing about the university is that people come from all over. They come from all different backgrounds, all different places. In a writing class, you really get to see this amazing population of very different purple all coming together to sort of think about something and then to express their ideas. The students are terrific and fun and it’s really fun to watch them grow.”