Professional Editing Award

Rolling Deadline

With the support of the Office of the President and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, we offer Vassar a small number of faculty each year the opportunity to work one-on-one with professional editors.  

Professional editors can provide faculty with crucial assistance. Developmental editors help scholars bounce ideas around and hone those ideas into succinct kernels of prose. They can assist with things like crafting successful book proposals, targeting publisher placements,  keeping to chapter-by-chapter schedules, and ultimately producing a strong manuscript.  Line/substantive editing generally entails helping to prepare an already written manuscript to send out. Often, professional editors are involved in an entire project, from the development stage through the line editing stage. 

Editors can also help faculty who must recraft work that requires revision and resubmission or that has been rejected, whether the work is in article- or book-length form. For example, they can assist with shortening a manuscript that has been accepted for publication on the condition that words or pages be considerably reduced. 

Our office has developed a short list of professional editors who have both come highly recommended by members of our faculty and have confirmed their willingness to consider projects from our faculty. We currently have a list of eleven editors, and our office can put faculty in contact with them. We also have an Editors of Color database. We are always interested in expanding our list and are open to additional editor recommendations from our faculty. Please contact me if you have any additional names. 

To apply for this program, faculty should provide:  

1) a description of the proposed project of 300- 600 words including, for example,  whether the project is an article, a dissertation to book, a manuscript already well advanced, a manuscript requiring shortening or revision, or some other project, together with details about the content and form; 

2) the stage of the project, if not already covered in the description; 

3) the target audience; 

4) the proposed time frame (i.e., 10 months from dissertation to manuscript). 

For faculty members at Vassar who are either on visiting or adjunct contracts, support from the  Dean of Faculty office in the form of faculty research and development funding is limited.  While priority must be given to faculty members on continuing contracts, those on short-term contracts are also eligible to apply to the Professional Editor Program, budgets permitting.  Faculty members who receive DoF funding must be able to expend the grants prior to the end of their Vassar contracts. 

There is a rolling deadline to apply for professional editing assistance. Email applications to Susan Hiner. In addition, please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.