A veteran English professor at Mississippi State is being recognized for outstanding classroom teaching by the national Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Dr. Nancy D. Hargrove, one of the university's William L. Giles Distinguished Professors, is the 2000 Mississippi CASE Professor of the Year. She is among 44 winners selected from a total of more than 470 nominations.

The United States Professor of the Year program salutes the most outstanding undergraduate instructors in the country.

Hargrove is the third MSU professor in the past five years to receive the honor. Hank Flick of communication was selected in 1995; Paul Grootkerk of art, in 1998.

Hargrove specializes in 20th century British and American literature. She is the author of two books, Landscape as Symbol in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot and The Journey Toward Ariel: Sylvia Plath's Poetry of 1946-1959. She currently is working on a third book, also about British poet Eliot.

Hargrove has received numerous awards since joining the MSU faculty in 1970. Among those honors: the Outstanding University Honors Program Faculty Award, John Grisham Master Teacher Award, MSU Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher Award, and Outstanding Humanist Award.

Hargrove holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Agnes Scott College and the University of Wisconsin, respectively. She completed a doctorate at the University of South Carolina.