by Deborah Weaver, Editor-in-Chief
In Spring of 2009 I attended a conference in New York City, where I listened to a faculty member from MIT explain how she had created a student run magazine at her institution. Brilliant. I traveled home, wanting to teach a course at UCF like she had designed, creating real opportunities for students to take responsibility for marketing, editing, and publishing a magazine—similar to the experiences they might encounter in future careers.
The department of Writing and Rhetoric embraced this idea and originally thought we could co-partner with Burnett Honor’s College. However, when it was decided that Imprint would be an online publication and would serve the department’s majors and minor students, it found a home in Writing and Rhetoric.
Over the fourteen years Imprint has existed, students have written about the various services on campus (Knight’s Pantry, VARC, Counseling Services, Writing Center, Hispanic Services, SGA, and Lead’s Scholars). There are articles focused on employment after graduation, studying abroad, Greek life, clubs, majors, housing, transfer students, non-traditional students, volunteerism, local restaurants, Florida’s hidden gems, and political activism at UCF. We have spotlighted professors, like Adele Richardson and Kathy Hohenleitner, and recognized outside community partners such as the Literary Arts Center, Page 15, and SALT. We continued to write and publish during two covid years, where all work was online. Those articles captured how difficult it was for students to be isolated. Our publication attempted to let them know they were not alone.
We have challenged writers and editors to dig beyond the surface, to find stories that not everyone knows at UCF. I am grateful to the editors who embraced this opportunity and contributed to keeping the publication vibrant and alive, whose ideas and visions shaped what Imprint is today. Thank you to the writers who found a home for something important they needed to convey to an audience.
I am especially grateful to Samantha Warren, an advertising major, who helped revise the website in the early years and designed the branding logo and banner we use today. Thank you to Pamela Gores, who remained an editor for an entire year and produced three beautiful issues, and thank you to Jarrett Webster, who served as an editor one semester and then volunteered in his spare time, determine to produce an issue when we returned to campus and had difficulty recruiting interns.
Imprint was never mine. It exemplifies the hard work of UCF students who want an opportunity to write, to empower readers, evoke change, and just entertain.
It has been an honor to serve as Editor-in-Chief. I look forward to reading future issues, to understanding what is on students’ minds, and seeing how their rhetoric impacts our community and the surrounding Orlando area.
