Students propose projects to benefit Cleveland community
Photo by Sydney Pressley.
Students in Professor of English Dr. Rachel Reneslacis’ Technical and Professional Writing class are proposing new ideas that can be implemented to benefit the Lee and Cleveland community.
The original purpose of the project was to test professional writing skills, but some projects provide clever ways to further engage language and literature in Cleveland.
“I asked the students to come up with proposals for initiatives that could be started on Lee’s campus by the Department of Language and Literature,” said Reneslacis. “So they have to come up with something that they think would be a new thing that our particular department could do. And then in their proposal, they explain what is this thing, how would it benefit the department, how would it benefit students, how much does it cost and who would have to do it.”
Students pitched ideas to the Language and Literature department chair, focusing on those that could benefit from the project. This gives students the chance to experience pitching a professional project.
“Their goal is to try and convince our department chair and a group of faculty to actually do this thing,” said Reneslacis. “They present pitches to those faculty members, and then the faculty members choose the top three that they’re most interested in, and then the students work together to develop those into full proposals.”
The top three proposals the faculty members chose this year were from sophomore English writing major Grayson Bennett, senior political science major Skylar Burton and senior political science major Derek Flatford.
Bennett is working on her final proposal with her teammates, junior English writing major Macy O’Fallon and senior English writing major Hannah Stone. Stone explains their proposal to fundraise for a pre-existing creative writing class for inmates in the Bradley County Jail, created by Lee alumna Olivia Webb. The project is now run by senior English writing major Cana Cooper.
“Gray was interested in taking over this service project,” said Stone. “She was thinking of ways to help Cana and make the project even better. One thing she found out was that Cana and Dr. Reneslacis fund everything themselves. So she thought a good thing for Sigma Tau Delta [the English honor society] to do to support them would be a small fundraiser to get their supplies.”
The fundraiser would be held at Bear Brew, a local coffee shop to raise funds and showcase art from inmates and those in Cleveland.
“We came up with a fundraiser where we could have a creative night where people would come, and they could sing, play an instrument or read poetry,” said Stone. “One thing we really wanted to do was include the work of the inmates in the creative writing class, so we would have someone read some of the things that [the inmates] wrote.”
Skylar Burton, a senior political science major in the pre-law program, is working on his proposal with his partner Alana Pearce, a junior English literature major. Their goal is to connect English majors with internship opportunities.
“My proposal is to find a professional in the English field that would help English department students find internships, help them establish connections and help them through the interview process,” said Burton.
For Burton’s proposal, a simple question in class led to a project that could help students build their resumes with real experience.
“I asked someone in the class to name one problem, the first thing that comes to mind, with the English department, and she said, ‘internships,’ so it just went from there,” Burton said.
The third proposal is from senior political science major Derek Flatford. He is working with senior English writing major Sarah Wiggers on his proposal for a college application writing workshop with juniors and seniors at Cleveland High School.
“The English 300 class would go over to Cleveland High School and help kids write their college application essays and check their drafts,” said Flatford. “That’s a big thing when determining your future, and there’s not really anything to help with that. I struggled with it really bad, actually.”
The students are currently working to develop their proposals, but there is no guarantee any of them will be implemented. Regardless, this project simulates writing in a professional setting with the goal of putting the plans into action.
For more information about the proposals, contact Dr. Rachel Reneslacis at [email protected].
