May 6, 2010

BCU Professor Presents Effects of Writing on Culture

SIOUX CITY, Iowa – Phil Hey, professor of English and writing at Briar Cliff University, recently gave a presentation at Iowa State University on the history of writing’s effects on culture from petroglyphs to the digital age. Hey addressed a group of undergraduate students, graduate students and professors of history who are members of Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society. 

“Writing is the technology that caused all later technology,” Hey said. “Writing changes the way people think and cultures operate and remains marvelously democratic.”

Since 1969, Hey has been writing and teaching at Briar Cliff and previously served as director of Career Services for the institution. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Monmouth College and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. He has studied creative writing under Gwendolyn Brooks at the University of Wisconsin.

In 1992, Hey won Briar Cliff's Duff Award for the Pursuit of Excellence; in 1998 he was given the Literacy Award for college English teachers by the Iowa Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts; in 2004 Briar Cliff awarded him the Spiritus Franciscanus.

Published in numerous magazines and anthologies, he is the author of six collections of poetry: In Plain Sight, Reorganizing the Stars, Plain Label Poems, A Change of Clothes, Ballads & Songs and How It Seems to Me. His work has appeared in The Des Moines Register, Midwest Living Magazine, Field Magazine, among other publications.

Enrollment at Briar Cliff University is over 1,100 students from 28 states. Students are educated in the Franciscan tradition of excellence in the liberal arts and career preparation in an environment of care, compassion and openness to all. For more information, please visit www.briarcliff.edu.

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