Editorial Freelancers Association
Member Profile
Tracy L. Skipper
Tracy L. Skipper Editing & Coaching Services LLC
Dr. Tracy Lynn Skipper is an accomplished editor and writer with more than 20 years’ experience in academic publishing, supporting both new and experienced authors writing for scholars and practitioners across a range of genres. As assistant director for publications for the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina, she managed a small academic press, publishing research monographs, scholarly practice books, a peer-reviewed journal, practitioner-focused online newsletters, and a successful series of guides for families of new college students. She has managed publications on a wide range of student success topics including designing, administering, teaching, and assessing first-year seminars; the design of high-impact practices (e.g., common reading programs, service-learning, learning communities, senior capstone experiences); new student orientation; residential learning; academic advising; supplemental instruction; peer leadership; support for underrepresented populations in higher education (e.g., first-generation and low-income learners, student veterans, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students); non-cognitive contributors to college success (e.g., sense of belonging, growth mindset, resilience, thriving); designing supports for specific transition experiences (e.g., the transition to college, the first college year, the sophomore year, college transfer, and the senior year); and the first-year experience in community colleges and international institutions of higher education.
Tracy is a frequent contributor to the literature on college student success. She wrote Student Development in the First College Year: A Primer for College Educators (2005), envisioned and served as managing editor of the five-volume series, The First-Year Seminar: Designing, Implementing, and Assessing Courses to Support Student Learning and Success (2011-2012), and co-authored the volume Writing in the Senior Capstone: Theory and Practice (2013) with Lea Masiello. She has also authored or co-authored numerous book chapters on a range of student success topics.
Her scholarly interests include the application of cognitive-structural development to composition pedagogy, the use of writing in first-year seminars and senior capstone courses, and exploring how the traits of high-impact practices are deployed in first-year seminar design and delivery. Recognizing the need to move beyond simply describing and categorizing experiences to identifying the characteristics making them educationally effective, she attempted to answer the question of what makes the first-year seminar a high-impact practice (HIP). Using data from the 2012-2013 National Survey of First-Year Seminars, she analyzed the structural supports for Kuh and O’Donnell’s (2013) HIP traits across a range of seminar types. The resulting case study collection—What Makes the First-Year Seminar High Impact? Exploring Effective Educational Practices (2017) seeks to understand how first-year seminars function as effective educational experiences at the campus level.
More recently, Tracy has been interested in institutional attention to creating coherence or alignment in the undergraduate experience—that is, how do institutions intentionally design vertically aligned experiences for students (i.e., services, initiatives, and learning experiences) that allow them to make steady progress toward personal and institutional goals? To that end, she collected and edited a series of institutional case studies to explore how key initiatives in the sophomore year built on first-year initiatives while laying the groundwork for continued engagement and success throughout the rest of the undergraduate experience. This work, Aligning Institutional Support for Student Success: Case Studies of Sophomore-Year Initiatives (2019), was featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Selected New Books on Higher Education in January 2020.
Tracy has served as a student affairs administrator, taught writing at the college level, and presented writing workshops for higher education professionals. She has developed and taught workshops and online courses on the application of student development theory to curricular and cocurricular contexts and frequently presented on what national datasets suggest about the organization and administration of high-impact educational practices. She has also designed faculty development workshops on the successful implementation of senior capstone experiences.
Tracy holds degrees in psychology, higher education, American literature, and rhetoric and composition.
Columbia, SC
US
More information: View PDF file
Years in the field: 22
Years freelancing: 2
Tracy Skipper
Dr. Tracy Lynn Skipper is an accomplished editor and writer with more than 20 years’ experience in academic publishing, supporting both new and experienced authors writing for scholars and practitioners across a range of genres. As assistant director for publications for the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina, she managed a small academic press, publishing research monographs, scholarly practice books, a peer-reviewed journal, practitioner-focused online newsletters, and a successful series of guides for families of new college students. She has managed publications on a wide range of student success topics including designing, administering, teaching, and assessing first-year seminars; the design of high-impact practices (e.g., common reading programs, service-learning, learning communities, senior capstone experiences); new student orientation; residential learning; academic advising; supplemental instruction; peer leadership; support for underrepresented populations in higher education (e.g., first-generation and low-income learners, student veterans, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students); non-cognitive contributors to college success (e.g., sense of belonging, growth mindset, resilience, thriving); designing supports for specific transition experiences (e.g., the transition to college, the first college year, the sophomore year, college transfer, and the senior year); and the first-year experience in community colleges and international institutions of higher education.
Tracy is a frequent contributor to the literature on college student success. She wrote Student Development in the First College Year: A Primer for College Educators (2005), envisioned and served as managing editor of the five-volume series, The First-Year Seminar: Designing, Implementing, and Assessing Courses to Support Student Learning and Success (2011-2012), and co-authored the volume Writing in the Senior Capstone: Theory and Practice (2013) with Lea Masiello. She has also authored or co-authored numerous book chapters on a range of student success topics.
Her scholarly interests include the application of cognitive-structural development to composition pedagogy, the use of writing in first-year seminars and senior capstone courses, and exploring how the traits of high-impact practices are deployed in first-year seminar design and delivery. Recognizing the need to move beyond simply describing and categorizing experiences to identifying the characteristics making them educationally effective, she attempted to answer the question of what makes the first-year seminar a high-impact practice (HIP). Using data from the 2012-2013 National Survey of First-Year Seminars, she analyzed the structural supports for Kuh and O’Donnell’s (2013) HIP traits across a range of seminar types. The resulting case study collection—What Makes the First-Year Seminar High Impact? Exploring Effective Educational Practices (2017) seeks to understand how first-year seminars function as effective educational experiences at the campus level.
More recently, Tracy has been interested in institutional attention to creating coherence or alignment in the undergraduate experience—that is, how do institutions intentionally design vertically aligned experiences for students (i.e., services, initiatives, and learning experiences) that allow them to make steady progress toward personal and institutional goals? To that end, she collected and edited a series of institutional case studies to explore how key initiatives in the sophomore year built on first-year initiatives while laying the groundwork for continued engagement and success throughout the rest of the undergraduate experience. This work, Aligning Institutional Support for Student Success: Case Studies of Sophomore-Year Initiatives (2019), was featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Selected New Books on Higher Education in January 2020.
Tracy has served as a student affairs administrator, taught writing at the college level, and presented writing workshops for higher education professionals. She has developed and taught workshops and online courses on the application of student development theory to curricular and cocurricular contexts and frequently presented on what national datasets suggest about the organization and administration of high-impact educational practices. She has also designed faculty development workshops on the successful implementation of senior capstone experiences.
Tracy holds degrees in psychology, higher education, American literature, and rhetoric and composition.
