“Schemata” journal second issue released; submissions sought for third

by Erica Smithson

Nineteen works out of 50 submissions appeared in early March in the second issue of “Schemata,” an online journal of essays and photography by Lycoming College students.

The journal, created in 2010, released its first issue that spring. Shanna Wheeler, assistant director of Lycoming’s academic resource and writing centers, had the idea to start a student-produced journal of essays soon after she arrived at Lycoming four years ago. She wanted to give students the opportunity to publish their essays and/or gain editorial experience by putting each journal issue together.

“Schemata,” Wheeler says, differs from journals at other schools because it is more inclusive of different disciplines and features work from freshman through senior years and even work of recent alumni.

Wheeler intended the journal to be a complement to the College’s Writing-Across-the Curriculum program, which attempts to foster writing skills among all students by requiring a number of writing-intensive courses both within and outside of their majors. The name “Schemata” is also fitting, as it means schemes, blueprints, plans — a framework upon which students can build their writing skills.

The submissions indeed reflect those intentions. Several of the submissions are those of research methods courses required to be taken by upperclass majors of several departments, such as history and communications.

Teachers are more than receptive to using the journal. Wheeler said she has received e-mails of encouragement from several professors. One philosophy professor called it a “terrific idea,” Wheeler said. Several more recommended their students’ work for inclusion in the issue, and others already are asking about submission guidelines for next year’s issue.

The essays appear on the journal’s website, www.lycoming.edu/schemata, in the form of downloadable PDFs. In the first issue, some essays were turned into “fancy” PDFs, which were accompanied by graphic designs and student artwork. However, because of time constraints this year, as well as not wanting to interfere with the citation format of many of the papers (such as those that used footnotes), Wheeler wished to only publish “plain” PDF documents that preserved the original Microsoft Word formatting. Nonetheless, student artwork still will be featured on the journal’s website. This issue features the photography of junior Jennifer Melhorn.

While the majority of submissions are made by students, Wheeler said she would like to see more student involvement in the creation of the journal itself. She says she hasn’t received much feedback from students as to whether or not they have used the journal as a model for their class work and she also wishes to have more student involvement in the production of each issue.

While Wheeler does choose the first “tier” of submissions that will make their way to being published, she allows her student editorial staff to “filter” the selections even further, especially if there are multiple submissions from the same department. For the first issue, there were quality papers,” Wheeler said, adding, “We wanted to keep the bar high this time around.”

The editorial staff for this issue included seniors Caitie Eberz, Emily Walters and Kari Allegretto and juniors Chris Bernstorf and Aliza Davner. Wheeler looks to her staff to not only maintain a high level of quality in each issue, but to use them as consultants for their departmental expertise. For example, she would rely on the philosophy minor and history major on her staff to tackle which submissions in those subjects would make the final cut.

“These students know what professors are looking for and their choices are made based on what professors (in that department) would expect.” Therefore, a more diverse editorial staff would be able to finely narrow down which submissions would reflect the highest quality work of each department.

Overall, Wheeler has considered assembling the first two issues a learning experience and she hopes to evolve the journal’s production with each consecutive issue. She wants to do this not only with the hope of getting more diverse submissions — she would like more papers from the education, sciences, math, music and accounting departments — but increasing the accessibility of the journal’s website. Recently, she has begun to archive, adding a “back issues” tab that will take users to the previous issue’s content.

Wheeler is already looking toward the third issue next year. She hopes that if students want to become involved on the copy editing staff, or would like to work as public relations facilitators to help promote the journal, to e-mail her to express their interest.

She also encourages faculty and students to think about submitting papers. As she has gone on maternity leave for the rest of the semester, she will make a formal announcement regarding submissions for the third issue in the fall.