During SMC’s graduation ceremony on Saturday, May 5, English professor Kelly Neil was announced as the winner of this year’s Archie Vernon and Margaret Wannamaker Huff faculty prize. The award is given annually to a faculty member who exemplifies outstanding professional qualifications, teaching ability and service.
The Huff award winner is determined by other members of the SMC faculty. All faculty members nominate one full time faculty member who they believe is a model of the award requirements, and the nominees are voted on by the Faculty Steering Committee. The Huff Award includes an $800 stipend for further study, travel for professional purposes or to defray the cost of publication expenses for scholarly work.
At SMC, Neil teaches as a professor of English and British Literature and is the director of academic advising. She is also the advisor to the English honor society, Sigma Kappa Delta.
Neil received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, where she also served as an instructor, and a M.A and B.A. from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Before starting at SMC in 2015, Neil taught at Appalachian State University as a visiting assistant professor in the English department. While at Appalachian State, she taught courses in British Literature, including Early Modern Literature and Politics and the history of English Drama.
In 1970, Dr. A. V. Huff, Jr., a former member of the SMC Board of Trustees and a retired faculty member of the History Department at Furman University, along with his wife, Kate, established the endowed award in memory of his parents, Archie Vernon and Margaret Wannamaker Huff.