A new partnership between a prominent scholar of urban education and a respected academic press is being hailed as a “game changer” that will yield new publishing opportunities for academicians—particularly those at historically Black colleges and universities and other minority serving institutions—who have traditionally struggled to get their research published and widely disseminated.
The Academic Publishing Program in Urban Education & Black Studies is a collaborative effort between Information Age Publishing and Dr. Chance W. Lewis, the Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Urban Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
The partnership was created to forge relationships with academic departments and schools at colleges and universities across the country that have a desire to help their faculty produce academic books in the growing field of urban education and Black studies.
“There’s an expectation for faculty and others to do books, but most of them do it only out of obligation because it’s a curriculum vitae item, or it checks a box when they’re looking for promotion and tenure,” said Lewis, who is also director of the Urban Education Collaborative at UNC Charlotte.
The goal, he said, “of getting true impact is limited, and what usually happens is that the onus is on the individual faculty member to find a publisher, to submit a proposal and work out a relationship to get their work disseminated.”
That process can be particularly daunting for faculty members, particularly those at HBCUs and other MSIs who have heavy teaching loads and serve on a ton of committees. For many, writing an academic book often falls by the wayside.
Lewis, one of the nation’s most respected education scholars, knows. He’s received dozens of phone calls from newly minted and seasoned faculty across the years, soliciting advice on how to write a book proposal, how to shop it around to publishers and how to market their work once their book is published.
