Prairie Fire

It is done! The project that has taken most of my free time this semester is finished!

My dean asked us to submit a summary of the project to the online newsletter for faculty and staff. Here's what I sent:

Since Fall 2006, we have been working towards the completion of our Excellence Awards project. We proposed the creation of an annual anthology of student writing and art, which would showcase some of our general education coursework, increase interest in the college, and generate student interest.

All last year, we solicited manuscripts via visits to classrooms, emails to faculty, notices in the campus newsletter, and table tents in the commons. Last fall, we also advertised a “Name the Baby” contest and Joan Brickner’s suggestion, Prairie Fire, was the winner.

This project was the result of great support from colleagues. The Graphic Arts faculty assisted with the development of this project by letting their students know about the project and telling anyone who was interested in designing a cover to come see us. Pamela Sund also assisted and brought us a stack of projects from her first year art students. Crystal Jensen, Joan Brickner, and Mark L. Johnson volunteered to be on the editorial board. This fall, we all met and selected the manuscripts and art that would be published. Chuck Chadwick helped us obtain a Bremer grant to cover our initial printing costs. Jamie Grant, then an MSCTC Graphic Arts student and now a full-time graphic artist, is responsible for the very striking cover and the overall layout of our first edition.

The overall goals of the project were:
· To showcase student writing and art and give recognition beyond a grade
· Create potential course material for our writing courses
· To provide an opportunity for collaboration between departments
· To increase the community’s awareness of our Gen Ed program and opportunities at this
campus
· To foster a sense of accomplishment for student writers and artists
· To increase students’ awareness of the concept of audience
· To create a self-sustaining and highly-anticipated campus tradition!

Proceeds from the sales of this book will fund the production of our next edition. We already have a dozen submissions for next semester but expect many more! Students interested in submitting their work (whether it’s a sociology paper, a poem, or an oil painting), can pick up submission forms from us.

Now we have had the pleasure of seeing the project come together: the first edition of the Prairie Fire anthology is for sale at Campus Crossing. They are $5.95 and make great stocking stuffers!

We weren't expecting several things along the way: the one that worked out the best, though, was that the printers were done about a half a week before we dared to hope they would be! We were basically told it may not be finished until finals week, but when I called Thursday for an update, I was told they were done! That threw off all Thursday and Friday plans because we had to pick them up, tally the complimentary copies, create some sort of marketing in the display case we commandeered. We still want to create a bookmark-like submission form to insert in all copies to solicit more manuscripts for the second edition!

Whew.

I was nervous about the whole project, of course, but we had such positive feedback from everyone that I can finally relax and enjoy it.