Dr. Michael Zerbe is a Professor of English at York College of Pennsylvania Who Gives Students the Chance to Work With YSW in the Classroom
Michael Zerbe is a Professor of English at York College of Pennsylvania who teaches topics including the rhetoric of science and editing. Michael has supported Young Scholars in Writing in multiple classes allowing students to assist in the publishing process; last year, his Professional Editing class served as editorial assistants in Vol. 20 of YSW.
Michael thinks “it presents a really interesting and unique opportunity for students because they get to apply their skills and some of the classroom content to a real-life professional situation that is in their field.” Depending on the class, students can play different roles in supporting the journal. For example, his Language and Linguistics and Civic Rhetoric and Writing classes are helping early on in the process by working as peer reviewers. “The articles are going to be sent out to the students, and the students are going to read through the articles and then evaluate them using a series of questions and prompts from the YSW editors to decide whether they are far enough along, interesting, important, and timely enough to warrant consideration for publication.” On the other hand, his Professional Editing class joined the process towards the end once the articles had been accepted and been through the editing process alongside their FAEs. “We really come in at the end of the process, and we’re copyediting for grammar and mechanics and consistency at that point. And we are looking at the YSW style guide, which is always a work in progress, and just making sure that [the articles are] going to be ready to go right before the issue gets printed and posted online.”
Michael sees this as a valuable opportunity for his students as a potential resume line and relevant editorial experience that can be brought to professional settings such as job interviews. “It's also good because a lot of the stuff we talk about in class becomes real: working with authors, trying to decide what needs to be addressed, and what can just be let go—you also don’t want to overedit—negotiating those boundaries becomes a lot more real with practice.”
As a professor, Michael enjoys watching his students have a good time in a real-life, professional situation, “and I think that always makes a difference.” With personal experience as a peer reviewer, he recognizes that skills don’t always feel real for students until they get first-hand experience with them. “It’s a lot of fun for me as an instructor to be able to give students that opportunity. He also appreciates that the journal is hosted at York College because all the editors are familiar with his students. They “know that my students are just learning this; they don’t expect it to be perfect.” He likes that the experience is project-based learning with expectations that aren’t necessarily perfection.
As one of the unique project-based learning experiences for students, Michael thinks “it’s fairly unusual for undergraduates especially to get that kind of editorial experience working on a real journal that gets published internationally.” He generally views project-based learning as a way to cater to different learning styles and methods. While some students benefit more from lectures or visual aids, some prefer when the class is more social or hands-on, but “in reality, most of us are a combination of those things….You can’t just assume that one learning style or one learning method is going to work for all students all the time. And so one of the things I like about [YSW] is it brings some variety in learning style to the class, and that helps all students, but I think it’s going to help some students more than others.”
Michael looks forward to giving his students the same opportunities and appreciates getting to help them in addition to YSW.
This post was written by Alex Merritt.
