When Sally Kuykendall, Ph.D., received a call for contributions for an interdisciplinary encyclopedia on women’s health, she saw it as an opportunity to include Saint Joseph’s students in the academic publication process.
At the time, Kuykendall, interim chair and professor of health studies, was supervising undergraduate students who were doing an internship in health studies as an elective course this spring. As part of their internship, students were required to write a final research paper on a topic of their choice.
But instead of assigning them the paper, Kuykendall asked her students if they were interested in co-authoring and submitting a set of entries to the encyclopedia “Women’s Health: Understanding Issues and Influences,” which will be published by ABC-CLIO Press in 2021. Doing so would give them real-world experience in scholarly research and publishing, she explains.
“It makes their resume stand out, and it really helps them get one step ahead of their peers because they’ve seen the publishing process,” Kuykendall says. “Also, if they go on to graduate school or the workplace, it shows they can complete a project successfully.”
The encyclopedia will include entries by four Saint Joseph’s interdisciplinary health services majors, co-authored with Kuykendall: “Autism Spectrum Disorder” by Priscilla Rodríguez ’20; “Deaf Gain” by Brittany Porter ’20; “Stress” by Kayla Schulingkamp ’20; and “Health Inequities and Health Disparities” by Alyssa Bentz ’21.