Heather McCallum Scholarship

Paula Sperdakos
 The members of the Committee this year included - besides myself - David Gardner; Heather Jones (serving as Secretary in Reid Gilbert's place while he was on leave); and Anne Nothof (serving as the fourth member of the Committee in Reid's place).
 The Scholarship was advertised in the usual places (mostly online), and Heather tells me that she posted an advertisement on some new web sites as well. As is usually the case, very little happened in terms of applications for the Scholarship until relatively recently, although Heather reports that she received over 20 inquiries and requests for the guidelines. I myself received a couple of inquiries after the deadline. Ultimately, four people applied for the Scholarship. One application was ineligible, and another was withdrawn when the applicant received funding for her project elsewhere.

 The other two applications were of an extremely high calibre, and we on the Committee agreed unanimously not only that both applications should receive awards, but also that for the first time in the history of the Scholarship, the total amount of money awarded should exceed $1000.

 The winners of the 1999-2000 Heather McCallum Scholarship are Shannon Hengen and Susan Stackhouse.

 Shannon Hengen, Associate Professor of English at Laurentian University, receives $750 toward her travel and accommodation expenses on Manitoulin Island in May and in Toronto in June, as she collects data regarding the history of Debajehmujig Theatre for a monograph she will be writing entitled Tellers of Tales: the First Fifteen Years of Debajehmujig Theatre.

 Susan Stackhouse, Assistant Professor in Dalhousie University's Theatre Department, receives $750 toward her travel expenses to collect dialect samples from PEI, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia as part of her work as Associate Editor (and sole Canadian representative) of the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA).

 To quote from Prof. Stackhouse's application: "IDEA was created in 1998 as a repository of primary source recordings for actors and other artists in the performing arts. It is the world's first on line dialect and accent archive  www.ukans.edu/~idea. At this time there are close to one hundred and fifty examples of dialects and accents from around the globe posted on this internet site. The user will find both English language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages. The recordings are playable for both PC and Macintosh computers. They are downloadable for free and can be used as research material."

 As our appointments on the Committee are for three-year terms, and David Gardner and I are completing the third year of our membership, I would ask you to discuss with the Executive(s) how you would like to proceed with regard to the two of us. Reid has said that he would resume his position as Secretary, and Heather has just completed her first year on the Committee.

Bulletin ARTC/ACTR Newsletter 24.2