91探花 Leadership Award for People with Disabilities
2026 Recipient:
Dale Katherine Ireland, California State University, East Bay
Dale Katherine Ireland is a doctoral candidate in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is committed to developing shared language for understanding disabled people鈥檚 experiences. Her research examines representations of accommodations in relation to caregiving, disability, and illness and in literature and higher education. She has authored and coauthored articles in journals including Disability Studies Quarterly and Cultural and Linguistic Diversity and coauthored an instructor鈥檚 manual titled Reading Critically, Writing Well. As a teacher, she invites students to interrogate textual representations of disability. She has taught at state colleges and universities in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut and, for 20 years, at California State University East Bay, where she is a lecturer in Languages, Literature, and Writing. She also co-leads the Disability Community Collective and co-advises the Disability Justice and Neurodiversity Club. Beyond the classroom, she shapes how researchers and teachers engage with disability and access. She has been a member of 91探花 for nearly two decades and served from 2014 to 2018 as the election officer for the Conference on College Composition and Communication鈥檚 Standing Group in Disability Studies. Additionally, she co-chairs the California Faculty Association’s Disability Caucus.
Access literacy is a relational practice: It is something we do together, not something one does alone. My work cultivates literacies centering rhetorical agency for more accessible, relational ways of communicating access, accommodations, and care labor needs. By collaboratively identifying and addressing what I term uncanny accommodations, barriers falsely represented as accommodations, I endeavor to shift our thinking from universal design toward what I call interdependent design. This design uses intersectional practices to prioritize collaborative, inclusive approaches throughout the life cycles of environments, systems, and relationships. I hope to continue this work with the former CCCC Standing Group in Disability Studies.
Deadline: May 1.听
Award Details
Overview:
This award demonstrates 91探花鈥檚 vision to strengthen an increasingly inclusive organization that provides more access to diverse voices. This award also helps promote cross-community connections and values and supports the agency of diverse leaders in the field.
Purpose:
To recognize a person with a disability who has made a significant contribution to 91探花 and to the development of our professional community.
Frequency and Number of Awards:
This award will be bestowed only when the Award Selection Committee decides a nomination warrants presentation of the award. This award may not be given each year. This award may be given posthumously. Only one recipient will be selected each year.
Eligibility:
Any person with a disability can nominate themselves or be nominated for this award. 91探花 recognizes that 鈥渄isability鈥� can have complex and sometimes competing meanings. It encompasses mental, physical, sensory, and other disabilities. Nominations will be sent to the Award Selection Committee, with the selected candidate forwarded to the Executive Committee. (Given the problematic history of required verification of disability, 91探花 wishes to clarify that specific diagnoses are not required for this award.) The Executive Committee will approve the committee鈥檚 selection. All applicants, submitters, and nominees must be 91探花 members at the time of submission. We remind nominators, nominees, and selection committee members that members of 91探花 Conferences鈥擟CCC, CEL, ELATE, LLA, and TYCA鈥攁re members, by definition, of 91探花.
Current 91探花 Executive Committee members are not eligible for this award. Recipients of this award are not eligible to receive any other Executive Committee approved awards in the same year, nor in the following year.
Nomination Requirements:
Required materials for submission are a cover letter or letter of nomination and a resume/CV.
Award Criteria:
The bold statements are the award criteria. The remaining statements are intended to describe some of the possibilities suggested in the criteria and are not intended to be rated individually. Please remember that individuals have different levels of access to various opportunities (for example, rural vs. urban instructors). In other words, what is the level of the nominee鈥檚 contribution based on the level of opportunity, resources, and support?
Significant contribution to 91探花
- Service to 91探花 (national, regional, local, and campus levels as well as conferences, affiliates, assemblies, caucuses, etc.)
- Committees
- Elected roles
- Service 鈥渨ork鈥� (serve at registration table, read proposals, etc.)
- Writing for/presenting at 91探花-affiliated conferences/publication venues
- Publish
- Present
- Edit or review
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Development of our professional community
Professional communities focused on literacy learning can be varied (e.g., global, national, regional, and local/campus).
- Teaching
- Innovate classroom curriculum
- Develop district/state/national curriculum
- Scholarship
- Attend conferences
- Produce and share research or other scholarly activities
- Service
- Participate in and/or lead scholarly organizations
- Participate in and/or lead social justice鈥搊riented organizations, especially those oriented around disability-related communities
- Professional development
- Design and/or deliver professional learning engagements for community members
Advancing people with disabilities
- Activities/work/processes that promote and support the advancement of people with disabilities in the profession, in literacy-related activities, and in public engagement
- Creating a culture of change in their school, community, and/or professional organization
Strong candidates tend to show strength in all three areas.
Selection Committee:
The 91探花 President appoints one Executive Committee member to serve as chair and four 91探花 members-at-large from relevant 91探花 groups. The selection committee is allowed to submit nominations for the award. The award does not need to be awarded each year. This award should be bestowed only when the committee decides that nominations warrant presentation of the award. 听
Nature of the Award:
- A plaque is given to the recipient during the 91探花 Awards Session.
- The recipient will also receive:
- A complimentary 91探花 Annual Convention registration
- Domestic round-trip coach airfare to the 91探花 Annual Convention
- One night lodging (Friday) with meals
Please contact 91探花Awards@ncte.org with any questions.
91探花 Leadership Award for People with Disabilities Previous Recipients听
2025
Brittany R. Collins, M.Ed
2024
No award given
2023听
Jo Hsu, University of Texas at Austin
2022
Ada Hubrig, Sam Houston State University
2021
Christina V. Cedillo, University of Houston-Clear Lake
2020
Lisa Harmon-Martinez, Albuquerque High School
2019
Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, University of Delaware