I appreciate the opportunity to apply for the position of Managing Editor at Crash Course. This is truly a dream position for me, and I think one to which I can bring some complimentary experience and expertise. As a practitioner and professor, I have experience collaborating as a team member and as a team leader across a variety of contexts. I would look forward to dedicating this experience to the service of Crash Course and its continued development and growth.
I’ve been interested in digital media production from childhood. I taught myself to write basic HTML in the fifth grade as my friends and I began to explore the untapped potentials of the World Wide Web. I programmed fan sites for my favorite movies, a digital scorebook for my softball team, and a homepage to share my life updates with family and friends. I luxuriated in the sensation of making, tinkering, adjusting, and finding the perfect combinations of visuals, text, sound, and motion to convey just the right message to just the right audience. Over the course of my life, my interest in digital media, which began as a secret, past-bedtime hobby, has become central to my professional and scholarly identity.
Since my late night autodidactic HTML coding sessions, I’ve been fortunate to engage digital writing and editing professionally and academically. These experiences have demonstrated to me that my true vocation lies in coordinating, managing, and supporting the work of content creators. I’ve exercised this passion in a variety of digital writing and editorial contexts. For example, as a fellow with the Gayle Morris Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (DRC) at the University of Michigan, I composed a variety of digital publications, including blog entries, podcasts, and images, to support the Computers and Writing community. I have also worked as a digital media editor for Din, an online magazine housed in the English Department at New Mexico State University. As an assistant professor of digital publishing at Susquehanna University, I currently advise the production of four student-run media: wiki textbook SusquPub, podcast Me/Us/U (currently undergoing final copyedits for launching Season 2), translation database Translation from the Trenches, and the Susquehanna University Common Reading Program. In each of these capacities, I review content to ensure its clarity, accuracy, and consistency, as well as to ensure that the content is appropriate to each respective venue and its respective audience. For example, as the Director of the Common Reading Program, I supervise a team of student interns as we select readings to include in a custom anthology, which produced for each new entering first-year class. I lead the interns through the process of selecting texts, soliciting copyright permissions, soliciting introductions for texts, and compiling and designing the anthology. In addition, I engage students in thinking critically about how the text will circulate amongst its target audience of incoming first-year students and how it will satisfy the needs of various secondary and tertiary audiences, such as professors, alums, and other stakeholders. I take this responsibility very seriously because our efforts set the tone for year on campus and influence the direction of various other programming and student experiences. In 2020, for example, the Common Reading Program invited Emily Graslie to deliver our opening lecture on the topic of “Curiosity” (an effort that we rewarded by much student stanning for Emily’s appearance). Through my work with these various publishing programs, I’ve developed a foundation for growing and managing digital publications, as well as an on-the-ground ground understanding of concerns that face digital publishers, including practical concerns, such as those related to planning and adhering to deadlines, and more theoretical concerns, such as building and maintaining an audience base. I would look forward to bringing the same attention to detail, careful planning, and thoughtful composition to the work of Crash Course as a managing editor.
In addition to my editorial and writing experience, I am a compositionist by training. I relish helping writers, of all genres and any experience levels, to develop their crafts. I have experience as an instructor of classes ranging from first year composition, to professional and civic writing, to digital publishing. I also have experience as a writing center consultant and as an editor for writers at all phases of their careers. This background and expertise provides me with a keen set of tools for not only responding to writing, but helping writers to improve their writing. The adage of my field is to “make better writers, not better writing,” a commitment that I take to heart. I enjoy working with writers one-on-one to identify their strengths and areas of needed improvement. I approach editorship as a collaborative process that results not only in a better script, page, show, or text, but results in a more cohesive textual experience, spanning a writer’s career and an audience’s long-term experience. As the managing editor at Crash Course, I believe I would be able to combine my aptitude for project management with my love of writing, editing, and teaching in a way that would benefit the team and its programming. I can easily imagine myself coaching new writers and producers into as the improve their craft while simultaneously collaborating with senior production staff to pitch, workshop, and develop new and innovative programs.
As an educator, I deeply value Crash Course‘s commitment to open access information and education. Crash Course is an important contribution to digital culture, and brings valuable insights to topics of national importance–many of my students have reported engaging with important conversations about ableism, racism, or climate change because they first learned about those topics from the Green Brothers. I would be honored to support the important work Crash Course contributes to our world.
I would love to further discuss my candidacy for this position. Please feel free to contact me via email (langh@susqu.edu) or via phone (505-215-9559). You are also invited to poke around this ePortfolio (wordpress.susqu.edu/lang) to explore my experiences and credentials.
Best of luck for a successful search,
Sincerely,
Heather Lang
Assistant Professor of Publishing and Editing
Susquehanna University
langh@susqu.edu
505-215-9559