Applications
You may read below or simply download the application.
Application for Positions
Academic Year 2009-2010
Deadline: The application must be postmarked or received by email no later than midnight on Sunday, September 20, 2009.
It is strongly preferred that applications be submitted by email.
Any questions should be addressed to catalystRUSER@gmail.com.
Hard copies may be mailed to
Catalyst
Rice University
Clubs Office- MS- 526
P.O. Box 1892
Houston, TX 77251-1892
Name:
Gender:
College:
Expected date of graduation (month/year):
Current Year:
Will you be studying abroad? If yes, when:
Intended Major:
Email:
Phone number:
Positions Available
Indicate the position(s) you are interested in by placing an X next to the item. If interested in multiple positions, please indicate your order of preference.
___Editor: Works with Executive Editor and authors to critique articles for style and flow.
Given your scientific background, would you prefer editing research articles or popular science articles?___________
___Copy Editor: Edits articles for technical errors. Proficiency in spotting grammar and punctuation errors required.
___Writer: For one issue, the writer must meet (at least) one of the following requirements:
- Submit one Popular Science feature article OR general article
- Submit one “custom-formatted” article (interview Q & A’s, book reviews, top 10 inventions of the year, etc.)
___Blogger: Submits one post ( 200 word minimum) to webmaster by the last day of each month (September through April). All posts must fall under a uniform topic (e.g. environment, health policy, technology, etc).
___Layout Designer: Works with the editor and author to layout the article for publication.
Works to ensure that all images used are legal.
___Graphic Designer: Designs original graphics for articles.
___Freshmen Representatives: The purpose of this position is for freshmen to be able to get a feel for how a publication is run. Therefore, freshmen reps will assist in overall promotion, recruitment, and production of the publication. They will also be in charge of various activities to promote the Catalyst (creating and posting flyers, promoting Catalyst at various research fairs, science fairs, etc).
Please answer the following questions.
1. If applicable, please write about any past experiences you have in working for a publication. Please include how many years you held the position.
2. What are your personal motivations for getting involved? If you have been involved with the Catalyst before, please describe your contributions.
Answer the question that applies to the position you are applying for.
3A. Writer: Please submit a sample of your writing that most accurately portrays the level and proficiency of your writing skills. Writing samples must be a minimum of 200 words and a maximum of 1000 words. The topic is open to the writer’s choice.
3B. Blogger: What topic are you thinking of writing about? Please submit a sample post (200 word minimum). Pictures can be included.
3C. Layout Designer: If you have prior experience as a layout designer, you may submit a .pdf file of your past work, which exemplifies your talents. If you do not, please select an article from the archives section of our website, and create a layout design using Adobe InDesign. The InDesign file must be converted into .pdf for submission. Adobe InDesign can be found on most public computers at Rice (e.g. library, your college).
3D. Graphic Designer: Please submit samples of your past work (e.g. T-shirt designs, logos, etc) that you feel exemplify your artistic abilities.
3E. Freshmen Representatives: How does becoming a freshman representative benefit you?
3F. Editor: Please critique the following article for style, flow, and content. Please make direct changes using the “Track Changes” option listed under “Tools” in Microsoft Word. You may make cuts, rearrangements, add-ins, or direct changes to prose.
3G. Copy Editors: Please make direct changes to the article using the “Track Changes” option listed under “Tools” in Microsoft Word. Your focus should not necessarily be on the appeal of the passage as a whole but on the minute details. Please keep a special eye out for grammar and punctuation errors.
Wikipedia has hit the big time. The massive user-generated and edited site is not only the biggest encyclopedia in the world, it’s also gotten the attention of the media elite, been lampooned by the Onion and Comedy Central and will come packaged with MIT’s $100 laptop project.
But what are the lessons of Wikipedia and what bodes for the future of wikis beyond Wikipedia? Will open collaboration be the exception or the rule?
Yoz Grahame, developer advocate for Ning, a startup that lets users build their own applications, says the lesson is clear. “If you let them build it, they will come,” Grahame says.
Grahame, who also helped found a Wikipedia-esque project called H2G2 that is now owned by the BBC, says the real lesson is in the interaction.
“Although it seems that with wikis that people are just editing text, there’s something more important going on, which is the editing of structure,” Grahame said. “And quite often in the discussion parts, like the talk pages of Wikipedia, that’s where you see process evolving. The great thing about wikis is that since they are such blank and re structurable slates, we are able to evolve with them.”
Of course, Wikipedia is far from the only wiki in the world.
Wikipedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia, has seven other projects and just announced that it would start an educational wiki called Wikiversity that aims to use and create free educational resources.
After programmers introduced to large companies by sneaking them inside the firewall to manage software documentation, some large corporations replaced their entire intranets with wikis.
Ward Cunningham, the father of wiki software, say wikis have only touched the surface of what is possible. Cunningham wrote and launched the first wiki in 1995 to help programmers share their techniques.
“Our vision of the web is more than a shopping mall, and wiki stands out there as shopping mall-not,” Cunningham said. “The creativity that is possible in the world wide network of computers far exceeds what wiki has done. How much work is it going to take to make WYSIWYG wiki universal, but somehow doing it universally hasn’t happened. Part of it was there was browser war happened in there sometime and the opportunity to do it right was lost.”
“We should be outraged that that little bit of future has not arrived, but I don’t think they can spoil it forever.”
But still many internet users have no idea how wikis work, and few wikis gain the critical mass necessary to make them useful.
Like blogs, a large number of wikis, perhaps the majority of them, are abandoned shortly after they are created. Conference wikis often have few posts, WikiNews (Wikimedia’s attempt to create a community-edited news site) has fewer edits a day than the lost encyclopedia and very little original reporting.
Enterprise wikis can die a slow death if employees aren’t encouraged to use them and if as, Grahame says, the answer to almost any question isn’t “It’s on the wiki.”
Wikis have also been spectacular failures.
Take for example, the Los Angeles Times’s attempt to start a wiki for editorials in June 2005, but days later, shuttered the attempt to allow users to co-write an editorial on the Iraq war. That ill-fated site illustrates what few readers of Wikipedia know.
Wikis can be ugly places, full of fights over minutiae and politics, repetitive reverts of users changes, locked pages and self aggrandizement.
Despite that – or perhaps even because of that, wikis and other forms of distributed decentralized collaboration are remaking the world, one edit at a time.