Writing for University and Beyond Undergraduate Editorial Experience

This project transformed a student journal volunteer experience into an internship curriculum for student volunteers. The journal, Writing for University and Beyond, is closely associated with UTM’s first-year writing course, ISP100. Under the guidance of faculty mentors, upper-year student volunteers work as reviewers and editors to support the publication process and learn new skills that will serve them in their academic and professional futures. 

Our goal was to grow the volunteer positions into distinct, credit-bearing opportunity for students to extend their learning from ISP100 to a new context. Over two-years, we built a programmatic curriculum that will form the foundation of a credit-bearing internship for student editors. This work began with semi-structured interviews with student editorial team to establish learning outcomes for the curriculum. We then developed a curriculum map from these learning outcomes, including assignments, readings, and learning activities. In the second year of our project, we gathered editorial students together for a series of focus groups through which we scrutinized and refined the curriculum into a coherent, actionable map. As we learned more about student experiences with the journal, we developed a series of documents to complement the internship. For example, we developed faculty mentor and student handbooks that connected closely with the curriculum. We also developed a more broadly focused Guide to Student Journals that aims to support journals of all types through their editorial processes.