One Ball State Day 2026

Say hi to our department mascot, Virginia Woof. We’re #bsuenglish, a community of staff, students, teachers, writers, linguists, scholars, and all-around lovers of English (and dogs!). We make things, analyze things, do things, all with critical and imaginative minds.

We cover a lot of ground here in the English Department, from a new Writer-in-Residence program to literary festivals to career readiness to hosting graduate student conferences to working with community schools to tutoring BSU students in writing--on and on! With major concentrations in creative writing, literature, teaching, linguistics, and professional writing, and graduate programs in most of these areas, we’re sort of like our own little college over here:

·      Applied Linguistics and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

·      Creative Writing

·      Teaching major in English/Language Arts

·      Literature

·      Professional Writing

Please help us make possible all we do. One Shining Example: River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, one of the oldest and most prestigious journals of literary nonfiction in the country, found a new home here in the Department of English at Ball State University in 2019, and since then, our hub of operations, the River Teeth Learning Lab, has grown into a platform of literary editing projects—including our biannual print journal, Book Prize, Book Reviews, River Teeth Revisited (a pedagogical column written by students), and weekly online magazine of micro essays, Beautiful Things (free to subscribe)—has become a dynamic place where students practice hands-on editing skills and readers around the world reap the benefits.

At BSU English we have AMAZING graduate students: they read, write, research, and teach; they win national and international awards--and they need your support! Our students really need funds to pursue their scholarship, attend trainings and conferences, and to represent Ball State around the nation and world. 

Way to go, students! 

Dedicated teacher and accomplished scholar Dr. Elizabeth Riddle retired from Ball State after 40 years. In that time, Dr. Riddle worked with hundreds of students, taught dozens of classes, and guided more research projects than we can count. Her passion for her field inspires her students and colleagues alike. She truly cares about her students, supporting their research, expanding their knowledge, and following their careers. If you worked with her, you know that she always put her students first, and you know how much she loved her work. This scholarship (Dr. Elizabeth Riddle Linguistics Scholarship) will support promising undergraduate and graduate scholars in Linguistics. 

So that’s it. That’s us. Help us keep making cool things happen for our students, our community, our Ball State. Whether you donate $10 or $1000, know that it’ll go to support the people and projects that make Ball State English such a great place! 

Thanks!