Ryan Roderick
Undergraduate research thrives when students are treated not just as learners, but as emerging contributors to a field. In a recent webinar, the editors (Crystal Bazaldua, Bonnie Garcia, Marcela Hebbard, and Khushi Patel of Young Scholars in Writing shared how their publication process doubles as a powerful mentoring model—one that instructors can learn from as they cultivate student scholarship.
What makes this model especially compelling is how closely it aligns with the Writing about Writing mission: treating research not as a distant professional practice, but as a way for students to learn how writing works.
The editors’ approach demonstrates how mentorship, revision, and inquiry can be woven together to help students see themselves as knowledge-makers.
In what follows, I synthesize our recent webinar with YSW editors to highlight how the journal’s editorial practices, which range from transparent review processes to sustained revision mentorship, offer a practical model for supporting undergraduate researchers.
These five strategies below show how publication can become not just an endpoint, but a pedagogical space where students learn how scholarly knowledge is made.
Publishing as a Developmental Experience
One of the editors’ central themes was that undergraduate research should be understood as developmental rather than evaluative. Students often submit promising but imperfect drafts, and that is expected.
A core commitment of WAW is that students learn about writing most effectively when they investigate it. Rather than treating writing as a set of decontextualized skills, WAW pedagogy asks students to study genres, rhetorical situations, literacy practices, discourse communities, and composing processes.
During the webinar, the editors described how Young Scholars in Writing encourages exactly this kind of inquiry. Student authors are not simply reporting on sources; they are asking questions about how writing functions in real contexts. Their work examines how writing circulates, persuades, constructs identities, and shapes communities.
The journal’s editorial process is designed to help students:
- Clarify and strengthen their research questions,
- Deepen their engagement with existing scholarship,
- Articulate their contributions more explicitly,
- And refine their arguments through sustained revision.
This framing positions publishing not as a reward for already being an expert, but as a learning experience that helps students become scholars.
Transparent and Supportive Editorial Practices
Another key takeaway from the webinar was the journal’s commitment to making the publication process transparent. Many undergraduates have little exposure to how academic journals work, which can make publishing feel mysterious or intimidating.
Another strong connection to WAW is the journal’s emphasis on publishing as a learning process rather than a final achievement. In many academic contexts, publication is framed as a product: you either meet the bar or you don’t. The editors described a very different model.
The editors explained that they aim to:
- Clearly explain each stage of the process, from submission to final decision,
- Offer detailed, constructive feedback,
- Help students understand how to interpret and respond to reviewer comments.
By making the process visible, Young Scholars in Writing helps students see publishing as a conversation rather than a judgment.
Feedback as Mentorship
The webinar emphasized that editorial feedback at Young Scholars in Writing is not simply corrective—it is pedagogical. Editors act as mentors who guide students through multiple rounds of revision.
One of the central goals of WAW pedagogy is to demystify how knowledge is created. Instead of treating scholarship as something produced by distant experts, WAW asks students to see research as a series of rhetorical, methodological, and interpretive choices.
This mentorship includes:
- Asking students to articulate the significance of their work,
- Helping them recognize patterns in their own writing,
- Encouraging reflection on how their thinking evolves through revision.
In this way, feedback becomes a form of instruction, modeling how scholars engage with one another’s work.
Helping Students See Themselves as Scholars
A powerful theme throughout the webinar was the importance of identity. The editors described how many students initially see themselves as “just undergraduates,” not as people who can contribute to scholarly conversations.
WAW has always emphasized that when students study writing, they begin to see themselves differently. They are no longer just learning to write; they are learning to think about writing.
Through the publication process, students begin to:
- Recognize the value of their insights,
- Understand their work as part of a larger disciplinary conversation,
- Gain confidence in their intellectual voice.
This shift—from student to scholar—was presented as one of the most meaningful outcomes of the journal’s work.
Implications for Teaching Writing and Research
Although the webinar focused on Young Scholars in Writing, its insights extend well beyond a single journal. The editors’ approach offers a model for how instructors might design research-based writing assignments and mentoring structures in their own courses.
What makes Young Scholars in Writing especially significant is not just that it publishes undergraduate work—it models what WAW has long advocated: that research is not only something we teach about, but something we teach through.
To sum up, here are four key ways that YSW publication practices cultivate undergraduate writers. The editorial process, from submission to publication:
- Approaches research projects as multi-stage, recursive processes,
- Makes scholarly practices explicit,
- Treats revision as central rather than supplementary,
- Helps students understand writing as a form of participation in knowledge-making.
As the editors made clear, undergraduate publishing does more than showcase strong student work—it teaches students how writing studies functions as a field and how scholarly communities are sustained.
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