Nicole B. Wallack, Director of the Undergraduate Writing Program, said of the launch: ”We are thrilled to be moving The Morningside Review to this format. The journal title reflects our origins on the Morningside campus, which is situated in a wider community of writers and thinkers. The student essays in The Morningside Review bridge the worlds within and beyond Columbia, and do so in exemplary fashion. We are fortunate that the hard work of our University Writing instructors and students yields an impressive pool of essays. Of the hundreds of essays voluntarily submitted by students to The Morningside Review, on average, only ten are chosen by an advisory board of University Writing teachers and students. The students whose essays are selected for The Morningside Review can feel proud of this recognition of their intellectual work in their first year as undergraduates.
“The Morningside Review plays two crucial roles for the Undergraduate Writing Program: It provides current students in University Writing with work to which they can aspire and it provides University Writing teachers with work from which they can aspire. Each edition of The Morningside Review invites students and teachers to expand their sense of what is possible in first-year writing. CDRS provided us with an online presence for The Morningside Review that is akin to professional journals and so honors the students whose work appear in it. Throughout the process they helped us to clarify and define our goals for the journal. CDRS’ input on key features strengthened the link between our journal’s content and design. For example, featuring our student contributors’ faces on the homepage emphasizes how the essays are written by individuals who are taking a significant step toward becoming public thinkers.”
CDRS' Director, Rebecca Kennison, added: “Working with the Undergraduate Writing Program to produce such an exciting new place for undergraduates to showcase their work has been a wonderful process. From the production of the logo to designing the look and feel of The Morningside Review, it was a pleasure to work with such enthusiastic collaborators. To see excellence in college writing being published on this impressive platform is an achievement for the journal, the program, and the university as a whole.”