Sorrentino receives Virginia Tech's 2005 W.E. Wine Award for Excellence in Teaching
Paul Sorrentino of Blacksburg, professor of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, received Virginia Tech’s 2005 W.E. Wine Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Three Wine Awards for Excellence in Teaching are made possible by a gift from the Alumni Association that honors William E. Wine, a former rector of the board of visitors and Alumni Association president. Students, alumni, and faculty nominate possible recipients of the award. In each of the academic colleges, a Wine Award Committee composed of previous winners selects one or two candidates from those nominated. The names are sent to the Wine Award Committee for the entire university, which selects and recommends the three recipients.
Sorrentino has published in the fields of technical writing, American Literature, and composition and is a nationally recognized scholar in the subject of Stephen Crane. Sorrentino unearthed some lost Crane papers in Hawaii in 1984, giving the scholarly world additional information on the writer. Sorrentino earned the Stephen Crane Literary Award for his extensive research. He has co-edited The Correspondence of Stephen Crane, co-written The Stephen Crane Log: A Documentary Life, and is working on Crane's biography. He has received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the South Atlantic Association of Departments of English, the SCHEV Outstanding Faculty Award, and numerous awards from Virginia Tech, including the Alumni Teaching Award and three Certificates of Teaching Excellence.
Sorrentino has designed 12 new courses, developed and coordinated a new system of advising in English, coordinated the creation of the Alumni Advising Award, and co-founded Virginia Tech's Faculty Writing Workshop. He was co-author of a year-long study of teaching at Virginia Tech for the Provost's Office and revised university guidelines for the Certificate of Teaching Excellence and the Sporn, Wine, and Alumni Teaching Awards. He has served the university in numerous ways and has been involved in workshops and presentations to outside agencies and universities. He is a member of the American Literature Association, the Stephen Crane Society, the Frank Norris Society, and the Hamlin Garland Society.
The College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences embraces the arts, humanities, social and human sciences, and education. The college nurtures intellect and spirit, enlightens decision-making, inspires positive change, and improves the quality of life for people of all ages. It is home to the departments of apparel, housing and resource management, communication, educational leadership and policy studies, English, foreign languages and literatures, history; human development, interdisciplinary studies, music, philosophy, political science, ROTC, science and technology in society, sociology, teaching and learning, and theatre arts.
Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become among the largest universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech's eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.
