The Council of Editors of Learned Journals has named the journal Literature in the Early American Republic: Annual Studies on Cooper and His Contemporaries (LEAR) — for which WPI Humanities and Arts Professor and Associate Provost for Academic Affairs Lance Schachterle serves as advisory editor — the winner of the prestigious “Best New Journal of the Year” award.

Schachterle’s role as advisory editor doesn’t indicate his central involvement in the establishment of this new annual. At the request of the publishers of the Cooper Edition, Schachterle devised the title, description, and editorial policies for selecting essays for LEAR. Although, as he reports, the “real work of soliciting and selecting essays, and copyediting them consistently for publication, is carried out by the co-editors (Jeffrey Walker at Oklahoma State University and Matthew Wynn Sivils at Iowa State University),” Schachterle continues to be involved in its production, having published essays in the first two issues of 2009 and 2010.

In addition, Humanities and Arts professors Kent Ljungquist and Wesley Mott also serve on LEAR’s Editorial Advisory Board.