Check out the new issue of Omnium: The Undergraduate Research Journal at NCWU, released in August 2023. Omnium collects written work by promising undergraduate scholars. This year’s essays, perhaps in response to current political trends, cluster around questions of identity, discrimination, justice, and freedom. In the same spirit, this issue of Omnium also features a forum of op-eds written by Dr. Kelvin Spragley’s students in support of protecting African-American history, Native American history, and women’s history courses for high-school and college students. We thank Dr. Spragley for entrusting his students’ writing to the journal, invite our readers to enjoy and learn from the fifteen new essays collected here, and also encourage teachers in any discipline to use them as models in their own courses. Please use attribution when you do so.

OUR MISSION. Omnium, housed in the English Department at NCWU, provides our undergraduate students with the opportunity to explore the major genres of academic writing, join in scholarly conversations, share their ideas, perform original research, and see their work published in a professional venue. Omnium also serves as a teaching resource for NCWU faculty—and faculty at other institutions—as the essays and research articles published here reflect the skill and knowledge of real students at various stages of their academic careers, from first-year composition essays to projects created in senior seminars and honors theses. The materials lend themselves well to in-class discussion, analysis, and emulation, and we hope that students will be energized when they realize that there is no single arcane secret to writing well. All it takes is practice, motivation, and direction.

For questions about Omnium, please contact the editor, Dr. Doreen Thierauf.