Goswami, Dixie

Dixie Goswami, Professor Emerita of English at Clemson University, was a Senior Scholar at Clemson’s Strom Thurmond Institute for Policy and Analysis and a Senior Scientist at the American Institutes for Research in Washington, DC.  Professor Goswami retired from the university in 1996. She is director and co-founder of the Write to Change Foundation, which supports youth leadership, literacy, and advocacy, and director of Special Projects for Middlebury College’s national Bread Loaf School of English Teacher Network.  As a long-time member of the Middlebury Bread Loaf faculty, she held the Robert Frost Chair of Literature and Language; as a South Carolina educator, she received the Richard Riley Award for Service to SC Public Education from the SC Council of Teachers of English.  She holds honorary d

egrees from Presbyterian College and Middlebury College. Goswami’s current work focuses on inclusive education policies and practices that provide vulnerable young people with the skills, resources, and support they need to thrive.  She serves as Director of the Middlebury Bread Loaf NextGeneration Leadership Network, which is supported by a two-year grant from the Ford Foundation’s Youth Opportunity and Learning initiative. BLTN NextGen will engage an exceptionally diverse cohort of youth from six states, including South Carolina, as allies and advocates in writing and acting for social and educational change. Goswami’s 15 great-grandchildren represent a wide range of ethnicity and experiences in South Carolina and beyond.

 She is a social media pioneer founding  a successful electronic network for teachers from the United States, Haiti, South Africa, Kenya, Mumbai, and beyond.  This network  “Breadnet” has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, and the Carnegie Foundation.   She taught in high school and then at Clemson and Greenville Tech.  She worked for the American Institute of Research in Washington, D.C.  She combined her skills in linguistics, technical communications, business writing, and composition to develop curriculum for college writing programs.  Her book “Writing in Non Academic Settings” became immensely popular on how to improve the craft of professional writing and editing in and out of work settings.    She recently started a non-profit organization called “Write to Change” which gives small grants to young people in developing literacy and new media skills.   She has a lifetime of public service.  In 1997 she won the Richard Riley Award for being  a senior scholar of the highest quality.    She was nominated for the award by an English professor at USC Aiken.   Professor Goswami received the South Carolina Humanities Governor’s Award in Humanities  in 2017. The annual awards were established in 1991 to recognize excellence in research, teaching, scholarship and other outstanding contributions to cultural life in South Carolina and beyond.