Dr. Linda Tate
An associate professor of English at Shepherd University, Dr. Linda Tate was named as the 2003 West Virginia Professor of the Year. Dr. Tate coordinates Shepherd's Minor in Technical Communication, serves on the Teaching and Learning with Technology Roundtable, is a member of the Women's Studies Board, and was the co-founder and co-director, with Rachael Meads, of the Appalachian Heritage Festival (now in its 9th year). Along with Prof. Meads, Dr. Tate was involved with the establishment of the Appalachian Writer-in-Residence program.
Dr. Tate is also an active scholar. Her first book, A Southern Weave of Women: Fiction of the Contemporary South, was published by University of Georgia Press in 1994 and was reissued as part of Georgia 's Brown Thrasher series in 1996. Dr. Tate's edited volume, Conversations with Lee Smith , was published in 2001 by the University Press of Mississippi, and her third volume, Power in the Blood: A Family Memoir, is slated for publication in 2005. Dr. Tate is currently collaborating with Dr. Jennifer Soule on a new book: Reading and Writing the Self to Wellness.
Dr. Tate has been the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including the Rockefeller Fellowship for the Humanities, which she held at Marshall University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia. While at Marshall University in 1998, Dr. Tate worked on an early version of her memoir, titled at the time Blessed Assurance. She has also been a featured scholar at the Mississippi University for Women's Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium .
Dr. Tate is also closely involved with the MCI Foundation's MarcoPolo: Internet Content for the Classroom project. In her role as program officer from 2000-2001, she managed the MarcoPolo web projects with the National Geographic Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Dr. Tate has also contributed to the nonprofit MarcoPolo program by training K-12 teachers nationwide on the effective integration of the Internet into the classroom, helping to develop the MarcoPolo search engine, and speaking on behalf of the MarcoPolo program at statewide meetings (such as Minnesota TIES), nationwide institutes (such as the NACME MarcoPolo Institute in Tucson, Arizona), and nationwide programs such as Brown University's Campus Compact. Currently, Dr. Tate serves as a writing consultant for the national Action for Healthy Kids initiative , chaired by former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher.
Dr. Tate has actively served her local, state, and regional communities, with membership on the West Virginia Humanities Council Board of Directors as well as the 2001 program committee for the Appalachian Studies Association. Dr. Tate is the president of the Shepherdstown Public Library Board of Directors and is also an active member of Shepherdstown Quakers. She is a member of the Friends Association for Higher Education and an active contributor to the Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Group.
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