Graduate Assistantship
Build your credentials and professional portfolio at this open access digital journal!
Deadline: June 16, 2023 (11:59 pm)
Open Rivers Editorial Assistant Graduate Assistantship
A successful candidate must have an interest in public scholarship, interdisciplinary and community-driven work, and editorial methods and processes.
The Open Rivers Editorial Assistant will support the editorial development of material for publication in Open Rivers, support the developing graduate student committee, and contribute to promotion of the journal. Because Open Rivers is a journal of public scholarship, this work involves working with texts and authors to ensure both the intellectual integrity of content and its accessibility to a broad audience. The work will include a range of responsibilities including opportunities to write for Open Rivers, recruit other writers, and work with authors and texts as we move them through our recruitment, editorial, production, and promotion processes.
Responsibilities
- Assist with editorial processes including correspondence with authors, organizing author materials, offering comments on articles, copyediting texts to align with journal style
- Write a column for Open Rivers to be included in a future issue
- Coordinate graduate student committee
- Support promotion of journal via social media platforms
- Support journal processes and work in other ways by accomplishing related duties as assigned/necessary
Expectations
One quarter during AY 2023-2024 (which quarter to be discussed upon selection)
- Flexible 10 hours/week
Additional Opportunities
- Learn and practice elements of the production process including WordPress and InDesign as interested
- Contribute to qualitative data analysis of journal content as interested
- Facilitate writer surveys using Qualtrics to help improve journal processes as interested
- Stipend for one (1) academic quarter
- Tuition scholarship
Eligibility
To be eligible, you must:
- be a TGS PhD student
- be in good academic standing
- have the approval of your program DGS and primary thesis advisor to accept the appointment
Important: The position is open to any PhD student in good standing in their 3rd through 7th year during the 2023-2024 school year. Remember that TGS calculates a student's year based on number of quarters they have been in their PhD program, so we encourage you to confirm your clock with your program, especially if you have questions about an MA/PhD program. At the discretion of their home departments/partner schools, students from humanities and social sciences program may "bank" the quarters to be used during their sixth year (see TGS policy on Interdisciplinary Graduate Assistantships).
Required Qualifications
- Demonstrated written and verbal communication skills
- Experience editing texts for publication
- Strong organizational skills
- Experience working effectively and respectfully with diverse constituencies
Preferred Qualifications
- Familiarity with Open Rivers journal
- Background with environmental conversations and questions, particularly related to water
- Curiosity about public scholarship and publishing processes
- Interest in work on environmental justice and climate change
Applications are submitted via a TGS online application portal (see link at bottom of this page). Please review all application instructions prior to clicking through to the portal; you will not be able to save an incomplete application. Note: application documents must be submitted in PDF format.
To Apply
Please prepare and upload one PDF of the following documents (documents must be combined into a single PDF):
- Cover letter: outlining your relevant experiences and how this opportunity would augment your professional advancement
- Research Statement: abstract of your dissertation topic (1 page); if you do not yet have a dissertation abstract, you may submit a writing sample (up to 10 pages)
- Curriculum Vitae
- Contact information for two professional references, one from off-campus if possible
About Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place & Community
Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place & Community is an open access digital journal of public scholarship that recognizes waters, and the landscapes around them, as spaces for timely and critical conversations about the relationships between ecological systems and social systems. We invite contributions from across academic disciplines and across community and professional sectors. Including the work of engaged thinkers writing from multiple knowledge bases, Open Rivers addresses the interests of a broad interdisciplinary, cross-sector audience.
Started in 2015, Open Rivers publishes new issues two to three times each year. Including both longer feature columns and shorter columns, the journal offers a wide array of content, both intellectually and geographically. Open Rivers has a strong track record of including Indigenous perspectives and scholarship, distilling complex environmental science for broad audiences, and engaging questions of environmental justice and climate change.
Recent issues have included Rivers and Meaning, a guest-edited issue with a strong fine arts focus, two issues on Women & Water stemming from a public call for submissions, and an issue highlighting the work of the Environmental Stewardship, Place, and Community Initiative on Indigenous epistemologies in education with a focus on environmental humanities. The Fall 2023 issue will focus on Rivers and Borders.
Open Rivers is published through the collaboration of the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Advanced Study and University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing.
Application Deadline
June 16, 2023 (11:59pm)
Application Portal Link
https://fellowships.tgs.northwestern.edu/gaship/