One of the longest serving members of Scribendi has returned as the faculty advisor. She served on staff for the 2004 edition, Editor in the 2005 edition, and office manager for the 2006 and 2007 editions. She returned six years later as the Faculty Advisor for the 2013 edition. After taking the reins from Dr. Donovan (who was Faculty Advisor when she was on staff), she is able to use her institutional knowledge of the workings of Scribendi and history of the magazine to guide the staff. She can look back at triumphs and failures when she was on staff to help the current staff make decisions.
When she was on staff, students used to send in their work directly to Scribendi via the Post Office, where the staff stored all of the work in the office and checked out individual binders with works in them. Students would need to send the art pieces with enough postage for the staff to send the piece back. Scribendi has come a long way since then. Now, with the help of Submittable©, the process is entirely electronic, and the students can review and comment on the works from any computer.
Professor Ketcham continues to grow the class and adjust the experience based on comments from the previous staff. Each year she looks for issues she can address. She seeks active growth and change in the process by removing, adding, and changing assignments to make sure the class learns and the process is as efficient as possible. Scribendi is a balance of fun and learning.
Each year she usually has an overarching, larger goal and some smaller goals for the magazine. Her first year as faculty advisor she reorganized the magazine website and last year she completely reorganized the staff website. Next year her goal is to take the magazine to the national level, something discussed as far back as 1998.
She came into the position with two specific goals: win awards for Scribendi and create a digital edition to coexist along with the physical copy. The physical copy is important as it is a preservation of the work in it. It will exist until it literally biodegrades. She wants the staff to experience creating something that will exist that long. The digital edition is designed to accompany the changing publication landscape. One of the biggest challenges ahead of Scribendi is where the publishing world will lead.
They had problems creating a digital edition to fill this role. Although she considered turning the magazine into a PDF copy of the print edition, but she remembers the capabilities of the staff.