liberty ferda

* Freelance projects over the past several years include: ghostwriting an autobiography/memoir for a professor of Africana Studies * profiling people and projects connected to the University of Pittsburgh for various Pitt publications * proofreading for Pitt Magazine * writing interactive "Movies and Stars" curriculum for Activity Connections, a company that publishes projects to be used by activities directors in nursing homes * writing 7th grade curriculum for the FLEX Literacy program, a reading intervention program designed to engage students in various subjects (chemistry, math, biology, history, etc.) while boosting literacy practice, by composing high-interest stories * writing features for the award-winning alumni magazine Carnegie Mellon Today, and more. Below are some clips from various publications available online or in PDF form.

Teaching freshman composition, creative writing, and journalism courses, which includes various levels of planning the course, creating the syllabus, tailoring daily lesson plans to meet the needs of students, creatively implementing alternative forms of writing and encouraging use of various means of technology in the classroom and in writing composition. I like to expose my students to a diverse array of voices and cultural perspectives, and encourage the reading of classic as well as contemporary writing. One of my main goals is to create a setting in which students feel free to stretch their skills beyond their comfort zone.

Summers: 2009, 2010, 2013 Facilitated writing workshops for high school students (2009, 2010) and students in grades 4-6 (2013), giving them outlets for creative expression and storytelling. Sample topics: fiction writing, plot development, poetry, memoir, flash nonfiction, photo essays.

Voices Reading Program: Copyedit Teacher's Edition (an interactive TE), Practice Master ancillary, and Interactive Whiteboard (IWB). This is K-8 social justice curriculum that utilizes award-winning children's books about issues such as bullying, acceptance, achieving goals, and more. The project finished production in the fall of 2011. Now I'm working on the teacher's edition and ancillaries for another literacy program called Guided Reading.

Generate story ideas for award-winning quarterly alumni magazine with a national circulation of 245,000; focused on 3 sections: Front Page narrative news highlights, Commons Room (450-word "slice of campus life" stories), and Alumni Hall Spotlights (250-word profiles) Research and follow up on article leads: making contacts, conducting interviews, finding the experience that makes a story Write narrative nonfiction articles of varying lengths for several sections of magazine, with the intent to educate readers and engage them with stories that offer insight to the human experience Manage source-checking reviews Copyedit/proofread page proofs at various stages in production As Editor, I also took on these varied tasks: Nurture and expand pool of freelance writers Assign freelance writers to stories Edit stories

Activities and Societies: Nonfiction Society--retreat organizer, Weekly Reading Series--coordinator and emcee, GSO Diversity Panel Rep

Summa Cum Laude Activities and Societies: Alpha Lambda Delta Honors Society, Kappa Phi Omega sorority, Gospel Choir, Habitat for Humanity