S. David Grover

As a freelance technical editor, I've worked on some major projects including dissertations in accounting and linguistics, an NIH grant proposal, and a proposal for a $30M construction project to benefit a remote Alaskan community endangered by global warming. I'm currently working with a tabletop game company on ensuring the instructions and materials for their upcoming release are clear and correct. As a self-employed technical editor, I engage in the following activities:

• I work with my clients to set clear expectations of the proposed work, timeline, and payment, agreed upon in a carefully worded editing agreement. I use the concept of levels of editing both to communicate with the client about what needs to be done and to save the client time and money.
• I provide consistent updates of my progress and involve the client in editing decisions, and I compile a stylesheet for each job to ensure consistency and to save the client time on future projects.
• I keep a detailed work record to show the client exactly what I'm doing and when.

In addition to the standard tasks of substantive editing, copyediting, and proofreading, I have taken on jobs that call for expertise in document design, so I have become skilled at Adobe InDesign and have developed as a typographer and visual designer.

Scoring AP Exam essays is an intense, week-long masterclass in holistic grading, assessment norming, and program administration. Five times over the last eight years I've attended the session and worked alongside hundreds of high school and university writing instructors to score hundreds of thousands of essays each cycle. In addition to becoming more familiar with large-scale assessment practices used in a key instrument for our field, I'm able to converse with my high school counterparts about their approaches to, frustrations about, and successes in teaching writing. Each year I leave exhausted but better prepared to help my own students develop as writers.

During my doctoral program I spent several semesters working as a tutor at the University Writing Center (UWC). Under Kathy Gillis's leadership, the UWC specializes in working with EFL students, an important mission since TTU has been designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution and attracts many international students to its petroleum engineering program, among others. As a tutor, I developed my skills working one-on-one with both undergraduate and graduate students and their writing — a great counterpoint to working collectively with students in a classroom. Additionally, I received training in and gained experience with online tutoring.

As a master's student, I worked as the managing editor of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, one of the best known literary magazines devoted to creative nonfiction. Founded by Dinty W. Moore, Brevity has weathered the turbulent literary publishing scene for nearly two decades. As managing editor, I oversaw the submission and acceptance process, and I also worked with accepted authors to hone their brief essays for publication. I also presented on my experience and insight as an editor at the 2010 AWP Conference in Denver.

As an undergraduate, I completed an internship with and then continued to work for the Religious Studies Center, the publishing arm of BYU's School of Religious Education, where I became familiar with scholarly editing, professional printing, and group editorial processes. I worked as part of a team of copy editors, typesetters, research assistants, and senior editors as we guided manuscripts from acceptance and review to fact-checking, editing for clarity, and proofreading and on through typesetting, galley-proofing, and publication. During my time with the RSC, I worked on monographs, anthologies, scholarly editions of historical texts, and an academic journal, The Religious Educator. I was even asked to research and write an article for the journal detailing the history of an endowed chair at the university, noted above under Publications.

The BYU Writing Fellows program promotes writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines by pairing peer mentors with students in courses that are typically not writing intensive and by working with the instructors of those courses to design better writing assignments and assessments. As a fellow, I peer mentored thirteen to sixteen students each semester on two major writing assignments each. For each assignment, that included written feedback to each student's first draft and a subsequent 20-minute face-to-face meeting to discuss further revisions. As a senior fellow, I also coordinated my team's interaction with the course instructor and worked closely with program administrators to fulfill the objectives of the program. Additionally, I researched and delivered presentations on peer mentoring-related topics during regular program workshops.

As the concert series program manager for two years, I was responsible for overseeing the organization and production of two major on-campus concerts, each one a two-night event with multiple artists. I volunteered hundreds of hours of my time to ensure the success of the events by completing the following:

• Each year, I recruited, trained, and coordinated a small team of assistant program managers who in turn were responsible for coordinating dozens of student volunteers leading up to and on the days of the events.
• I worked with campus offices and officials to secure permissions, venues, and artist accommodations.
• I personally liaised with the professional musicians and their agents, managing the negotiations and signing of their contracts.
• With my assistant program manager for publicity, I oversaw campus-wide advertising campaigns that involved posters, flyers, and promotions.
• I was personally responsible and had to account for the use of over $24,000 of school funds.

When I took on the position, the yearly concert was a one-off, but my team's goal was to prove that a concert series was financially and practically possible. In addition to planning our events, we kept detailed records and put in place protocols that would enable future organizers to save time and effort. We were successful in creating an ongoing concert series of several shows each year.

As a teenager I was involved with Boy Scouts and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. Over seven years of activity I performed hundreds of hours of service projects and took on various leadership positions. I also completed week-long specialized leadership training camps — Junior Leader Training Conference (JLTC) at the regional level and National Junior Leader Instructor Camp (NJLIC) at the national level — and later twice staffed my region's JLTC. As an adult I spend a year as an assistant scout master.