{"id":8589,"date":"2018-01-29T11:25:17","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T16:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/?p=8589"},"modified":"2025-07-02T13:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T18:49:08","slug":"honoring-professor-ednah-shepard-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/honoring-professor-ednah-shepard-thomas\/","title":{"rendered":"Honoring Professor Ednah Shepard Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By David Stock\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\"The
David Stock, a proud and grateful graduate from UW-Madison\u2019s Composition & Rhetoric program, coordinates the writing center at Brigham Young University (Provo, UT), where he is Assistant Professor of English.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re an avid reader of Another Word<\/em>, you may recall a blog post<\/a> by Brad Hughes\u2014the Director of the Writing Center and the Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison\u2014 honoring Professor Joyce Steward, founding director of the UW-Madison Writing Center in 1969 (then called the Writing Laboratory). In this post, I\u2019d like to continue that tradition by honoring one of Joyce Steward\u2019s mentors and colleagues in the UW-Madison English department: Professor Ednah Shepard Thomas, a pioneering writing program administrator who helped develop and direct UW-Madison\u2019s Freshman English program from 1947-1970 and who contributed to the development of the Writing Laboratory.<\/p>\n

\"Black
Mrs. Thomas in the yard of her home, 1940s. Photo courtesy of William Thomas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I first learned about \u201cMrs. Thomas,\u201d as Steward and most everyone called her, when I was a PhD candidate in UW-Madison\u2019s Composition & Rhetoric program. In 2010, Brad invited interested students to contact him about collaborating on the publication of a memoir by a former UW-Madison faculty member. At this point, I had conducted initial dissertation research on the history of rhetorical education at UW-Madison. After meeting with Brad to discuss the project, I was excited to learn more about that history from a primary, and previously unavailable, document.<\/p>\n

And what a primary document it was: over 400 typed (i.e., on a typewriter) manuscript pages, a tome of personal and professional history that described Thomas\u2019s early life and schooling in the New England area; her coursework and teaching in UW-Madison\u2019s English PhD program; her marriage and child-rearing in nearby Monona, WI, followed by an unexpected divorce and the challenge of raising three young children alone; her fortuitous return to teaching at UW-Madison, successfully administering Freshman English, and eventually earning\u2014at age 65!\u2014the title of Full Professor.<\/p>\n

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A Collaborative Project<\/h2>\n

When I joined the project, Brad had already been collaborating with Professor Susan McLeod<\/a>, a distinguished WAC scholar who met Mrs. Thomas while pursuing her PhD in UW-Madison\u2019s English program, and Professor Mike Palmquist to publish the memoir as an open-access book through the WAC Clearinghouse<\/a>. Over time, the scope of the project broadened to include the publication of additional relevant materials:<\/p>\n