Mentoring Student Work

Students from all departments engage in scholarly work.

In the humanities, faculty members may think course assignments that earned A grades might be eligible for publication in The Oak Leaf because they

  • were well-written,
  • had clearly defined propositions, 
  • used the third person singular, 
  • had few grammatical and punctuation errors, 
  • and had careful documentation. 

In the sciences, faculty members may encourage their students to publish in The Oak Leaf, if their research

  • had a testable hypothesis,
  • was replicated and used statistical tests whenever appropriate,
  • included new findings,
  • and was worthy of presenting at a scientific conference in their field of research.

Those teachers may consider conferring with students about how to prepare their work for the journal. Preparation may include recognizing a larger audience for the piece (what will non-majors, or someone unfamiliar with the discipline, need to know?), reviewing each sentence for clarity, shortening or lengthening the submission, adding a thesis that is appropriate to a wider audience, and generally coaching a student to transform an assignment into a publishable manuscript. 

Book reviews and historical reviews in any discipline are welcome.

All submissions will be reviewed by at least two Oak Leaf Board members who teach or work in the field in which the manuscript has been submitted and who may, or may not, suggest submissions be resubmitted with recommended revisions. If the submission is rejected, the reviews will explain why and invite mentors to help students learn about the “revise and resubmit” process in academic publishing.