We’re currently in the final stages of our work on a new monograph about the impacts of prescribed fire and thinning on wildfire severity. While this final design draft gets a thorough going-over by both agency experts and our own team, it’s also in the hands of some very special reviewers – high schoolers at Cascadia Tech Academy in Washington.
Students review every monograph and journal before final publication, and their feedback is a valuable part of our editing process. Was a table too confusing? We redesign it. Was the layout difficult to follow? We reorder the text and figures to make the article easier to understand. Was there a word that students struggled with? We add it to the glossary and insert clarifying text in the article. The student reviewers are important contributors to the final product.
Because we at Natural Inquirer value student input – that’s who we’re making these publications for, after all – we reserve a special page in each monograph and journal for recognizing these contributors. Read some of their comments and see them hard at work during their review sessions.
We’re always on the lookout for new review classes, too. We try to represent a broad range of classrooms and geographic areas. It may be the end of a school year, but it’s never too late to add your classroom to the list. Who knows? Maybe the next publication will feature your own students!
Interested in Volunteering?
Sign up your class to be a student editorial review board! We’re always looking for middle or high school classes willing to review an early design draft of new publications. If chosen, we’ll send you copies of the new publication and a short list of questions so students can provide feedback. We also ask that you take photos of the students while they review and submit photo permissions signed by parents or guardians.
