Through the Pearce Center and its projects, Clemson faculty have gained national honors.
Clemson University was named Time Magazine “Public College of the Year” in 2000. Time cited Clemson's “cutting edge communication across the curriculum program” and the efforts of Professor Art Young through the Pearce Center for Professional Communication.
Dr. Arthur P. Young, Robert S. Campbell Chair in Technical Communication, was the 2002 recipient of the Exemplar Award given by the Conference on College Composition and Communication. A profile of Dr. Young and a summary of his acceptance speech by Pamela B. Childers is available at The WAC Clearinghouse.
In 2004 Clemson's Advanced Writing Program, sponsored by the Pearce Center, garnered one of the first CCCC Writing Program Certificates of Excellence. This award honors only 20 programs per year.
The Client-Based Program for Advanced Writing Classes, headed by Dr. Summer Smith Taylor, has been recognized by the National Wildlife Federation in the 2005 Campus Environment Yearbook of the National Wildlife Federation.
Dr. Art Young received the South Carolina Governor’s Distinguished Professor Award in both 2006 and 2007.
Dr. Summer Smith Taylor received the 2007 award for Best Article on Methods of Teaching Technical and Scientific Communication from the National Council on Teachers of English, for her article “Assessment in Client-Based Technical Writing Classes: Evolution of Teacher and Client Standards,” Technical Communication Quarterly. Dr. Taylor also received the 2008 Service-Learning Award from the S.C. Commission on Higher Education, awarded to the Advanced Writing Program’s Client-Based Writing Program.
The Communication-Across-the-Curriculum program continued to attract national attention in 2006-07, ranking in Princeton Review’s top five programs in the nation (Clemson World, Summer 2007, p.19). Clemson also is recognized as having an “outstanding example of an academic program believed to lead to student success” in its Writing Across the Curriculum program and is one of only five public institutions among the 15 recognized for making writing a priority.