Graduate Programs
Certificate Programs
Professional Editing
The 15 credit hour graduate Certificate in Professional Editing, an interdisciplinary program administered for the School of Liberal Arts by the Institute for American Thought, can be taken as a standalone certificate or in conjunction with the M.A. in English or History. The program offers editing concentrations in English and History, i.e., critical editing and documentary editing.
Twelve credit hours of English courses comprise the Critical Editing core: ENG L501 Professional Scholarship in Literature (4 cr.), ENG L680 Topics: Textual Theory and Textual Criticism (4 cr.), and ENG L701 Descriptive Bibliography and Textual Problems (4 cr.).
Eleven credit hours of History courses comprise the Documentary Editing core: HIST H501 Historical Methodology (4 cr.), HIST H543 Internship: Practicum in Public History (4 cr.), HIST H547 Topics in Public History. Specific topic in Historical Editing (3 cr.)
The final 3-4 credit hours required to complete the certificate are elective, and may take the form of a ENG W609 Directed Writing Project or an ENG L590 Internship supervised by the faculty editors of the Institute’s resident scholarly editions or a project course or internship approved by the student’s certificate advisor.
For the core of the Technical Editing concentration, students take W531 Designing and Editing Visual Technical Communication (4 cr.), W532 Managing Document Quality (4 cr.), and W609 Directed Writing Project. For the final course, it is recommended that students take W525 Research Approaches for Technical and Professional Communication (4 cr.), but other relevant electives are available.
All of these courses will double-count for both the editing certificate and the English M.A. or History M.A. (Electives outside English and History are also available, but these will not normally double-count.) GRE scores are not required for admission to the certificate program, but foreign students are required to take TOEFL and receive a score of 550 or above. Students already admitted to the English or History graduate program can follow a more streamlined admission process.
Due to the unique nature of this program you must contact the program director for an interview before completing the Graduate Online Application. There is an application fee involved; so we do not want you to apply unless you qualify.