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.”