The Op-Ed Project

With the support of the Boone Family Foundation, TWU’s Department of History & Government welcomed the Op-Ed Project to Texas Woman’s University for the first time on March 4, 2011. 

Recognizing that women do not submit opinion articles and editorials to media as frequently as men, Op-Ed targets, trains, and empowers women to write for the op-ed pages of major newspapers, online sites and other key forums of public discourse. The Op-Ed Project holds seminars with top universities, think tanks and non-profits, women’s organizations and community leaders across the nation. Seminar participants are added to a database of women experts and go into a feeder system for op-ed, radio, television and other media venues.

Since The Op-Ed Project began in January 2008, over 3,000 women experts have come through the program, producing hundreds of op-eds in major (over 50,000 readers) media outlets, as well as thousands of pieces in smaller media in print, online, on radio, and television. Op-eds by women experts in The Op-Ed Project community have conservatively reached tens of millions of readers.

Participants were selected from four distinct groups--TWU faculty, staff, and graduate students, and members of community groups that focus on issues of concern to women. Participants work with the Op-Ed staff to develop opinion pieces suitable for publication over the course of the seminar. The Op-Ed project provides established writers, some who have won major writing awards, to serve as mentors during and after the seminars. Working with such mentors, participants seek publication of their opinion pieces in local, state, and national publications. The Op-Ed project has an extremely impressive track record in working with participants who then publish their writings in a variety of media sources.

History and Government plans to offer the seminar again in 2011-12.  If you would be interested in participating please contact Barbara Presnall or Mark Kessler.