UTC’s UReCA production team at Glacier National Park. From left: Anna Melby, editor-in-chief; Dr. Jayda Coons, faculty advisor; Ainsley Henderson, editor; Ellie Minneci, managing editor; and Ally McCoy, editor. Photo courtesy of Anna Melby.
The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (UReCA), a national publication run by students, has its editorial home at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Each year, UTC students help manage a nationwide team of peers, review hundreds of submissions and decide what projects earn a spot in the journal’s highly selective pages.
Housed in the UTC Honors College, UReCA is an interdisciplinary publication of the National Collegiate Honors Council. While UTC is where the production takes place, submissions come from undergraduates nationwide—and the editorial team is comprised of students from numerous institutions.
Dr. Jayda Coons, assistant professor of English for the Honors College, serves as UReCA’s faculty advisor. She said UTC’s editors take on a range of responsibilities.
“Our national editors all review submissions, but UTC students take on the added responsibility of collecting those reviews, making the final editorial decisions and coordinating with everyone involved—from other editors to faculty advisors to the National Collegiate Honors Council,” Coons said. “They’re the ones keeping the journal’s operations moving.”
This year’s editorial staff includes Brock Scholars Ellie Minneci, the managing editor, and Anna Melby, the editor-in-chief.
Melby, a biochemistry major who hails from Memphis, will serve as editor-in-chief for both her junior and senior years.
“My job is to oversee all of the student activity,” Melby said. “I focus on delegating tasks to our national editors—who are based in different states—by assigning pieces for them to edit and checking in on various projects we’re working on. I do some editing myself, but most of my role is organizing who gets which pieces and making sure everything is moving forward.”
Melby said the submissions process is rigorous. The editorial team reviews work anonymously to ensure fairness and so they can focus solely on the quality of the submissions.
“It’s a national journal; we get lots and lots of pieces,” she said. “We want to keep it that way, but also make sure that it’s accessible for everybody.”
The journal’s acceptance rate is around 10%, with published work selected from top-rated submissions in humanities, STEM, social sciences, creative writing and visual art.
NCHC’s UReCA national editors and production team at Glacier National Park. Photo courtesy of Anna Melby.
Minneci, a psychology major and business administration minor, joined UReCA in January as managing editor. She works closely with Melby to move submissions through multiple stages of review before publication.
“We look at the pieces, evaluate them and assign them to certain people based on their interests,” said Minneci, a senior from Crossville, Tennessee. “That helps with the quality of the way we analyze and evaluate our pieces. Once we get through the first stage and see what is up to standard, that’s when the journal really starts to come to life.”
Final decisions, she said, are not made on a whim and are quite a difficult part of the process.
“If our rating scales from one to five and we have a group of fours and fives—which is our selection window—then we have to take those fours and fives and say, ‘Which of these do we want?’” she said. “A lot of that is going to be collaborative with our other editors, but it will be Anna and I actually going through and seeing which ones are up to snuff.”
Minneci said joining UReCA was an easy decision after being approached by Coons.
“She came to me and she said, ‘I’m taking over UReCA. You want to join?’ I think the only option for me was to say yes,” said Minneci, whose research interests center on the social sciences. “With editing and looking over other people’s work, I think it is a good way to think about your own work and think more critically about it.”
A highlight of the year for UReCA editors is the annual retreat, which brought together the national editors for training, planning and team-building. This summer’s national retreat took place at Glacier National Park in Montana.
“That’s the first time I met everyone, and it’s really the only time that I’ll meet all of them until national conferences or next year’s retreat,” Melby said. “It was fun for us to bond because now that we’re all friends, we all want to work harder for each other.”
Melby and Minneci encouraged students to submit their work, regardless of their discipline.
“If you work really hard on a paper and you’re really proud of it and you wish that you could get more recognition for it, submit it to UReCA,” Minneci said. “We also want to support you as a student, and it’s a great thing to add on your resume and to feel proud of yourself for.”
Students on a paddle board at Glacier National Park. Photo courtesy of Anna Melby.
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