Thanks to the leadership of a group of literacy faculty in Bellarmine’s School of Education, the Kentucky English Bulletin, an online peer-reviewed
journal, recently surpassed 1,000 downloads.
The Bulletin, which is the official journal of the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English Language Arts (KCTE), features scholarly works, opinion and literary pieces written by and for English teachers and students K-20.
The Bellarmine faculty team—Dr. Winn Wheeler, Dean Elizabeth Dinkins and Dr. Jess Smith—became the editorial board in 2020.
“KCTE is the state affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of English—one of the primary professional organizations for English educators at all levels,” Wheeler said. “They struggled for several years with their executive
board putting together an issue, but they needed an editorial team. Hearing that need, the literacy faculty saw an opportunity to take on a project that served Kentucky teachers and put us in conversation with a larger network of teachers.”
The Bellarmine team then approached Dr. John Stemmer, Bellarmine’s library director, to help with launching the journal on ScholarWorks, a digital repository. Abigail Walsh, director of Bellarmine’s Center for Community and Professional Education,
assembles the PDF copy of each issue.
The Bellarmine team has since published seven issues.
“Through this work, we serve teachers across Kentucky through providing practitioner-based articles and current research,” Wheeler said. “We also see our role as serving young scholars, as we have put in place a double-blind review system.
It is our hope and mission to mentor budding scholars and teachers in getting experience with writing and publication.”
The most recent issue, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Fall 2024), focused on student writing and included contest winners across a variety of genres, including poems written by three 2023 Bellarmine graduates.
“This is a meaningful way for young writers to have their work published,” Wheeler said. “These pieces are often used by English educators as models as they engage different units of study in writing.”
Working on the Kentucky English Bulletin also gives the Bellarmine literacy faculty valuable experience in editing, she said.
Dr. Jonathan Cullick, a professor of English at Northern Kentucky University and the secretary of KCTE, said he was grateful for Bellarmine’s hosting of the Kentucky English Bulletin.
“The site is organized, easy to access and clearly formatted,” he said. “I have shown the site to my students so they can see one of the benefits of joining KCTE.”