NEWS RELEASE

Contact: David West (west@nsula.edu )
News Bureau
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71497
(318) 357-6466

9/29/2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NATCHITOCHES - Dr. Lisa Abney has been named acting head of the Department of Language and Communication at Northwestern State University.

Abney been a member of NSU's faculty since 1997 and has been director of the Louisiana Folklife Center since 1998. As director, Abney has worked to archive and maintain more than 6,000 hours of audio and videotaped materials and a print library. She has also overseen the operations of the Regional Folklife Program, and the Louisiana Folklife Journal.

She has also been director of the Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival, an event which was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' Bicentennial Celebration: Local Legacies Project and has received the "Top Twenty Events in the Southeast" Award given annually by the Southeast Tourism Society.

"I look forward to this opportunity" said Abney. "In the Department of Language and Communication, we have a dedicated, hard working faculty and staff who are committed to providing the best possible instruction to our students. Our faculty members are wonderful, highly-qualified people who care deeply for our students. "

Abney has also been an active writer and researcher, co-editing four books with colleague Dr. Suzanne Disheroon-Green on American, Southern and Louisiana literature. She has also edited the journal Louisiana Folklife and The Fifth Annual Kate Chopin International Conference Proceedings. Abney has also written numerous articles for national and international professional publications and books as well as local and regional publications and continues work on the Linguistic Survey of North Louisiana.

Since 1998, Abney has been principal investigator or co-investigator for 18 grants worth more than $600,000 to NSU.

Abney earned a bachelor's and master's degree at Texas A&M University and a doctorate at the University of Houston.

From 1991 to 1997, she was a lecturer in English and an academic advisor at the University of Houston, serving as coordinator of academic advising in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in 1996-97.

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