In fall 2019, Jackie Hoermann-Elliott, PhD (assistant professor in English, Rhetoric & Spanish), was completing her first full-time year at Texas Woman's University. She had found an academic home, a mentor and an outlet for her enthusiasm for writing. Then in the span of six months, everything changed. Her mentor died, the university shut down, and her program was struggling.

Four years later, her program has earned the highest honor her community can bestow. TWU's First-Year Composition (FYC) program has been awarded the 2023–2024 CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence by the Conference on College Composition and Communication. The award celebrates the rebuilding of the FYC program under the leadership of Hoermann-Elliott, for whom pursuit of CCCC's certificate of excellence has been a passion project, born of her belief in the critical importance of the program and the memory of FYC's previous director, Katie McWain, who died in 2019.

FYC will be honored April 5 at the 2024 CCCC Awards Presentation in Spokane, Wash.