For their final project of the semester, the students in the Professional Editing class at EIU have to complete a major editing project on behalf of a real client. These students are all seniors and graduate students with past coursework in professional writing. 

Ideal projects should involve editing either a single major document (such as a manual, website, article, or lengthy annual report) or a series of shorter, related documents. Also, the projects should involve comprehensive editing, where the student provides editing feedback on content, organization, design, and style in addition to copyediting for grammar, which means your document does not need to be in a finalized form to make a good project. Students can even help carry out user testing or user surveys concerning a document or series of documents if that’s what you need.  

Students will be selecting projects and holding preliminary meetings with their clients at the beginning of November. For each project, students will be expected to familiarize themselves with the client and/or organization so their edits will be appropriate for the situation. They will then do the bulk of the editing on their projects between November 16-December 9.

If you think you may have a project that would work as a student project, would you please contact me with some preliminary details? I’d be happy to discuss the assignment with you further to see if your project might be a fit. I’d like to find projects that will be good learning experiences for the students but that also will benefit the clients, so I’m happy to talk with you about ways to make your needs fit the assignment’s goals.

Thanks.

Terri Fredrick
Associate Professor of Professional Writing
Internship Coordinator
Eastern Illinois University
3070 Coleman Hall
(217) 581.6289
tafredrick@eiu.edu