Great Lakes Platform for High School Students

About The Great Lakes Platform

The Great Lakes Platform is a journal sponsored by the Honors Program that features talented high school student writing and creative work. This periodical is designed to feature the work of talented high school students in the Great Lakes region. It is edited and published as a community service venture by students in the Central Michigan University Honors Program under the supervision of our university faculty. Support is also provided by the CMU College of Education and Human Services and the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. The Great Lakes Platform will be published in both a hard-copy format and posted online.

Teacher nominations

The Great Lakes Platform will feature analytical essays, creative writing, and visual art. We request that each teacher select one or two students from their class that have already crafted exceptional pieces worth sharing with others. We anticipate that these will already be well edited but final copy editing will also be provided by the periodical review team.

Submission requirements

Each submission should be sent in, from the recommending teacher, to honorsplatform@cmich.edu with the subject line “The Great Lakes Platform Submission.” In the body of the email, please include your name, the student’s name, the name of your school, and a brief description of the work submitted. Papers should come in a Word Document format and visual work should be submitted as a JPEG file.

Review process

As submissions come in from schools, a trained panel of Central Michigan Honors students, working with a faculty advisor, will determine which pieces will be included in the journal. When pieces are submitted, they should already be substantially revised and as close to a final draft as possible. However, after the final selection decisions have been made, the CMU editorial board will work directly with each author to help them polish their piece for publication.

Publication

The compilation of pieces for the current year's edition of the periodical will be completed before the end of the Winter/Spring term for most public schools in the Great Lakes region. Hard copies of the Platform will be shared with the contributing student, their teacher, and their school. The periodical will also be posted online to easily share with others.

If you have any questions about submitting to the periodical, please contact our editor-in-chief at honorsplatform@cmich.edu with any questions.

If you have any questions about this project more broadly, please contact honors@cmich.edu.