As the undergraduate research journal Young Scholars in Writing ends its tenure at York College, two professors and students take one last look to determine how publishing undergraduate research has affected the trajectory of the student authors’ careers.
York College of Pennsylvania offers a variety of programs and classes to strengthen students' writing skills and encourages them to seek out opportunities to publish their work. One such source is Young Scholars in Writing (YSW), an undergraduate international journal dedicated to publishing research articles on rhetoric and writing studies, which is about to end its tenure with the College.
But before the journal transfers to the new university, two of the professors on the editorial staff, Dr. Gabe Cutrufello, Chair of the Department of Communication and Writing and Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition, and Dr. Kim Fahle Peck, Director of the Academic Success Center, decided to conduct a study with the help of two student research assistants.
A Journal for Undergraduate Growth
The YSW journal originally started in 2003 at Penn State Berks. Since then, it has traveled to different universities, where it will take up residence for about five to six years before moving to the next one.
The journal publishes original student research on topics related to writing studies and rhetoric. There is no restriction on the amount of experience with writing students need to submit, and as a result, the journal has received diverse work from students outside of English and Professional Writing majors. One of the types of articles they accept is First-Year Spotlights, which are first-year research articles about writing and rhetoric, typically connecting their topic to their field of study.
The professors emphasized that the reviewing and feedback process on articles and manuscripts was meant to provide mentoring to first-time authors. Submitting and publishing work in a high-quality academic journal for the first time can be a daunting experience, especially for students new to the process. So, Dr. Cutrufello and Dr. Peck ensured they had a system where feedback could encourage new authors to continue working on their material.
“It is designed with a lot of mentorship as part of the experience,” Dr. Cutrufello said. “Because of that, and because we’re not expecting that the initial submission is really close to being the final submission, what we’re really looking for is something with good guts.”
“Sharing your work with anyone is vulnerable, but the more feedback that you can get on a piece prior to trying to get it published, the better position you’ll be in,” Dr. Peck said.
A Space for Student Involvement
YSW has been with York College since 2020, concluding its fifth and final year in April. Once the journal publishes its final issue with the College, it will be handed over to the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, where its new editorial staff will take over for the next five or so years.
During the journal’s time at YCP, Dr. Cutrufello and Dr. Peck always involved the students as much as possible to give them experience with writing, editing, and publishing. That way, the students could learn what it takes to publish research and what it means to work for a journal like YSW.
For example, Dr. Peck coordinated the first round of peer reviews of journal submissions, which were completed by undergraduates before the editors and other faculty members examined them. Students in the Professional Editing Courses were also permitted to assist with line editing for the accepted pieces.
“We’ve integrated a lot of the work of the journal over the last five years in a variety of our classes,” Dr. Cutrufello said. “As a quick example, the digital writing class that I have taught and that Dr. Cope has taught do a lot of the early drafting of the author biographies and blog posts that accompany the journal.”
“These are the kind of things that we’ve been able to do here that’s unique to this journal,” Dr. Cutrufello continued. “It’s not just a destination for excellent undergraduate research and writers; we’ve made it into a space where students in our publication classes, our upper-division writing classes, and Teaching and Tutoring [course] can gain valuable experience working on a pretty high-level journal…[and] participate in meaningful ways.”
Recruiting Research Assistants
Along with recruiting classes to help with the journal, the professors have taken on student interns in the last four years to work more closely with YSW. Typically, the interns would work in the Spring Semester, just as the journal wraps up its work for the academic year and submissions open for the next.
However, since this incoming volume will be the last one published through the College, and there wouldn’t be another issue to prepare for, enough work wouldn’t be available for full-time interns. As a result, two research assistants were brought onto their team to complete the tasks the professors felt were important to this issue.
The professors were particularly interested in analyzing the journal’s history and social media presence. Since preparations for the journal to move institutions were underway, they felt that having that data would be helpful for the next editorial team and show how far YSW has come regarding author diversity and accomplishments.
Shelby Welch ’26, a Professional Writing major with a Marketing minor, was recruited to lead student research for the journal, continuing some of the previous interns' work. With Dr. Cutrufello as her professor, Shelby was already familiar with the work of YSW and even participated in his Digital Writing course in the fall.
When he asked if she would be interested in being a research assistant, she was excited to be involved with the social media aspect of the study.
“Last semester, I made plans for what we can post to not only spread news and advertise the journal, but to really highlight the undergraduate authors that are featured in each issue and the hard work they put into their articles,” Shelby said. “I spent time researching what has worked in the past in terms of social media, but also what the impact of using social media is.”
So far, Shelby has enjoyed reviewing analytics and determining which posts perform best on each platform. The experience has deepened her appreciation for undergraduate research and the amount of work that goes into it. Knowing she could connect one of her major interests to it made the experience even more impactful.
“I love working on social media in general,” Shelby said. “It’s something I have always found interesting: what connects with an online audience and what type of posts get the most engagement. I also love creating content online.”
“I would like to go into social media on some level. I think it’s now more than ever important to connect via social media. Whether it is for advertising or spreading awareness for something, I think it’s a powerful effect social media can have.”
The professors’ other research assistant, Maddie French ’27, another Professional Writing major, was brought onto the team to help examine some of the journal’s history, specifically related to past authors that had been published.
The idea originated from the editorial team's small project to celebrate the journal’s 20th volume a couple of years ago. They had attempted to contact every author who had ever published in the journal to write short reflective pieces about their experiences and what it had meant to them. This meant tracking down 20 years' worth of students worldwide and creating a spreadsheet of every institution they were from.
Maddie had already been working with Dr. Peck as a tutor in the Writing Center and did some work for the YSW website in one of Dr. Cutrufello’s Digital Writing classes. So, when she was contacted in October 2024 about assisting with creating author profiles for students who had submitted work, she accepted the offer.
Her work focused on researching where the student authors went to college, collecting data such as the institution's size and setting (public or private) and what they studied at the time. Though finding some college data for certain authors was tricky, Maddie found creating the profiles and learning about the different undergraduates who submitted manuscripts to the journal to be a positive experience.
“It makes me feel really involved,” Maddie said. “I really like working with the professors, and so I think it’s a great opportunity. I feel very lucky that I was reached out to specifically for the position and I just really enjoy it.”
“I think I’ve learned a good bit of professionalism in it - in having one-on-one meetings with my professors,” Maddie continued, “because in class, you already have to be semi-professional, but it’s nice to have a closer connection to some of the professors at college because they are all very talented and incredible. So, as I said before, it’s really nice to work with them more closely and learn from them in the process.”
From One Editorial Team to the Next
Though they are still analyzing the collected data, Dr. Cutrufello and Dr. Peck estimate that the data collection and analysis will be completed by the end of the Spring Semester.
Once their research has been gathered, the professors will present their data at the Conference on College Communication and Composition (CCCC), one of the world's largest professional writing studies organizations. This year, the conference will take place April 9th-12th, 2025, in Baltimore, Mayland.
There, Dr. Cutrufello and Dr. Peck will be joined by the incoming YSW editorial team. The team will share their prep work and ideas in preparation for the journal’s transfer to the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. Already, they have expressed interest in expanding the journal and encouraging multilingual research and writing.
“Anytime an editorial team comes, they have some things that they are about and are trying to promote,” Dr. Peck said. “For us, it was empirical research, wanting to have that qualitative, quantitative, and not just textual analysis. Which had definitely existed in the journal before, but that was just an emphasis of ours. So it’s cool to see, as the journal moves to different editorial teams, what kind of the focus will be for those editors.”
“I’m hoping that once we have all of the data about the history piece, I think that is a great thing that then the new editorial team can promote,” Dr. Peck continued. “Not just who can publish in this, but then where you go on or what you might do after the fact of kind of what’s the value of it? So I’m hoping that we’re gonna have some data that can be really useful for the journal to continue to recruit authors.”
