Research Project

Dear Professor Pamela Gerhardt,

Hello. We are students currently taking an introduction to professional writing course offered in
the English department at the University of Maryland, College Park. For this course, we are
creating an ethnographic report on a person who takes part in professional writing and is related
to a particular interest we have in the field. We are all interested in longform magazine writing
and editing, and we would love to explore any opportunity that would allow us to understand
what this kind of profession has to offer.

As someone who teaches writing non-fictional narratives, we thought that you would be a great
person to conduct our report on. We believe that the course you teach and your extensive
background in writing would be perfectly suited to what we have in mind for this project. Our
first draft for the ethnographic report proposal will be due on March 6th and we hope to schedule
our first interview with you before then if your schedule permits. Well be getting started on our
official ethnographic report before April 17th so if we have any follow-up questions, we might
request another interview before April 26th to finalize our report and hear any input from you on
our progress. The project will be finished by May 8th and we hope to share with you what we
gathered from your profession.

We are really excited to hear more about the processes and intricacies of copyediting. We wont
use your real name at any point in the process of creating this report. We will conduct our report
in a way that doesnt interfere with your work, and respect any personal information regarding
your workplace by not discussing it openly with others or in our writing. We will do our best to
create the best representation of the work that you do in our report so that anyone unfamiliar with
your profession will have a full understanding, and we are willing to share a final copy of our
product with you. We would really appreciate getting the chance to hear from a voice inside the
English department, and hope to make this process as beneficial to you, and your work, as it will
be to us. We hope to hear from you soon!

Best Regards,

Mattie Solomon, Mary Wight, James Lutz & Kaitlyn Hopkins