How Connections Helps You Become a Better Writer

by Cassandra K. Hoffman, Jelsy Cadenas-Santos, and Kimberly A. Barchard Issue 16: Fall 2021

Connections: Word from the Interactive Measurement Group is an email newsletter written by and for our lab members. Its primary purpose is to create a sense of community among current and former lab members by sharing articles that can help fellow lab members achieve their educational, professional, and personal goals. Its secondary purpose is to assist lab members in becoming better writers and better mentors.

Our newsletter team is here to mentor you as you write an article for Connections. First, we will help you understand the kinds of articles we publish as part of our newsletter. Then we will mentor you – through emails, Word documents, and meetings – as you attempt to create a suitable article. When we successfully mentor you through the process of writing and publishing an article, our primary product is not the article, but you – the author. In other words, we are more concerned with your growth and refinement as a writer than with the publication of your article.

In a previous article, we provided guidance on how to write an article for Connections. In this new article, we explain who is on the newsletter team and how we will help you become a better writer. This article will help you understand the editorial process and interact effectively with your editor, so you get the most you can out of this experience.

Our main goal is to mentor you on your writing. This includes:

• Guiding you through the editorial process, so you create an article that fits within the guidelines of
our newsletter: useful to readers, personal, persuasive, etc.
• Challenging you to clarify your thinking, so you know what you want to say and how to say it.
• Helping you improve your writing skills by providing both encouragement and constructive feedback.
• Encouraging you to make steady progress on your article, despite the difficulty of the task.

Connections is the combined effort of many people. Most semesters, more than a dozen lab members are involved in writing, editing, and publishing articles. Moreover, several lab members take on multiple newsletter roles simultaneously (for example, a lab member can be both an action editor and also a reviewer). Distinguishing between roles can help you figure out who to contact for questions about your article and understand why authors have direct contact with Kim on some articles but not others.

You – the author are the primary creator of your newsletter article. You select a topic that is important to you, write an article about it, and approve the final content. You also draft and approve your own bio and provide a photo of yourself. You must stand behind every word that is published, because your article will be freely available on the Internet and could potentially be seen by future employers and graduate schools.

The action editors mentor you as you attempt to create an article that is suitable for publication in Connections and that will help you in your future plans. In addition, they help put each article in context by drafting an introduction, finding an appropriate content picture, and asking for your bio and photograph.

Reviewers provide feedback on the articles when asked by you or your action editor. Typically, it’s most helpful to ask for big-picture feedback, but sometimes you might want to ask for sentence-, word-, or punctuation-level feedback. For ideas about how to get big-picture feedback on your article, see our workshops on Giving and Receiving Feedback and on Keys to Great Writing.

The website coordinator creates article webpages — like the one you are viewing now — using an established template to ensure consistent and professional appearance. Their job is to ensure that your article, bio, and photo reflect the content you wanted. After the newsletter has been emailed to everyone, the website coordinator also creates an index page that looks like that email. They publish these pages on our lab’s website, so your article can be viewed by future lab members and by anyone on the Internet.

The managing editor organizes and tracks work on all articles, making sure that authors and editors are making progress every week. They also train and mentor new action editors and help any action editor who has questions. Thus, the managing editor may help with the editing of your article, even if the managing editor is not your action editor. The managing editor also prepares the article line-up for each newsletter issue, and so they recommend whether your article will appear in the upcoming issue or a later issue. Finally, the managing editor updates the email list to include new lab members, so that we are distributing your article to all current and past members.

The editor-in-chief, Kim Barchard, provides one round of big-picture feedback on each article early in the editorial process to make sure that the article is heading in an appropriate direction. When she does, you will see her comments among the feedback you receive. Kim also approves all final content, including the articles, bios, photos, introductions, and content photos. Because she approves the final content, she also copy-edits the content of the articles. Your action editor will ask you to either approve her copy-edits or make additional changes.

We will mentor you using four main tools: decision letters, Microsoft Word comments and track changes, and meetings.

Decision letters provide you with big-picture feedback, often including suggestions on what to do next. They are meant to encourage you and keep you motivated. They provide guidance to help you spend your time productively, without telling you how to write your article. Decision letters will be delivered to you in the form of emails.

Microsoft Word comments provide feedback on specific sections within your article. Your action editor may use comments to ask questions or to point out issues with particular sentences and paragraphs.

Microsoft Word track changes are used to show suggested changes to the wording of your bio or article. You can accept or reject our changes or modify the text in some other way. Remember that our suggestions are just suggestions: You are the author and responsible for the final content.

Meeting with you allows your action editor to mentor you one-on-one without the communication barriers of email. These meetings may occur at any stage of the editorial process. We can help you pick a topic, help you figure out how to incorporate feedback, or provide guidance and encouragement any time you get stuck. Meeting with you helps us nourish a mentor/mentee relationship, encourages us both to continue making steady progress on the article, and helps clear up any confusion that might have occurred in the written feedback.

Writing a newsletter article is both challenging and rewarding. It is challenging because you need to figure out first what you want to say and then how to say it. It is rewarding because writing an article will help you refine your thinking on a topic that is important to you. It is also rewarding because you will see your writing transform, and the skills you develop will assist you in all your future writing endeavors: conference posters, theses and dissertations, and writing on the job. For many, a newsletter article is their first professional writing. We’re here to help you get the most you can out of this experience.

Cassandra Hoffman has been a member of the Interactive Measurement Group since the fall of 2020. During her time in the lab, she has served as a poster team leader and managing editor for the lab’s newsletter, and she has conducted a variety of workshops to help new and existing lab members. In the spring of 2022, she will be graduating with a B.A. in psychology and a minor in neuroscience. After she graduates, she plans to obtain a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, hopefully doing research on trauma and stressor-related disorders.

Jelsy Cadenas-Santos graduated from UNLV with a B.A. in psychology in the spring of 2021. Jelsy has been a member of the Interactive Measurement Group since the fall of 2018. During her time in the lab she has taken on various roles, such as Poster Supervisor, Website Coordinator, and Managing Editor. This fall, she served as Dr. Barchard’s head teaching assistant for three sections of introductory statistics. She is passionate about learning and sharing knowledge, and hopes to eventually pursue a master’s degree.

Kimberly A. Barchard is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at UNLV and the Director of the Interactive Measurement Group. In 2016, she founded Connections: Word from the Interactive Measurement Group to connect current and previous lab members and to build lab members’ writing and mentoring skills. Kim worked with a small group of lab members to establish the mission, format, and production cycle for this newsletter. For the last five years, she has collaborated with lab members to improve the procedures action editors use to mentor authors and the procedures she and the managing editor use to mentor action Editors.