The Composition Department would like to congratulate Dr. Ellen Smith on winning the Tina & David Bellet Teaching Excellence Award. The Bellet is awarded to Pitt educators demonstrating the highest levels of commitment to teaching, educators who prove highly effective in helping students achieve meaningful goals. In addition to teaching a range of undergraduate courses in the composition department, Smith developed and teaches ENGCMP 0213 Seminar in Composition: Disability Studies. In this class, and throughout her career at Pitt, Smith has found productive ways to combine her academic research interests and passion for literature and writing. For example, her disability studies course “draw(s) on theoretical writing in disability studies as well as creative and critical literature by writers with disabilities” while “introduc(ing) students to ways of identifying and questioning certain sociocultural assumptions about ability, sensory experiences of the world, and mental as well as physical health.” Smith also regularly works with our graduate students as coordinator for the Writing Center's Dissertation Camp.