Melvin Jay Thorne — Teaching Professor
Editing

Contact Information

Office: 4092 JKB

Phone: 422-1719

Email: mel_thorne@byu.edu

Commonly Taught Courses CHum 230 Print Publishing
ELang 350 Basic Editing Skills
ELang 351R Editing Student Journals
ELang 399R Editing Internships
ELang 410R Genre and Substantive Editing
ELang 421R Studies in Editing
ELang 430R Editing for Publication

Vita: Link to Vita

Biography:

Mel Thorne's areas of special interest are in editing and publishing, especially scholarly publishing. He teaches courses in these areas and serves as Director of the Humanities Publication Service, a student lab designed to give advanced students hands-on experience editing and producing professional publications. With the help of these students, Professor Thorne provides publication services to faculty members throughout BYU: editing manuscripts, creating indexes, providing design services, and producing books, magazines, and scholarly journals. Before joining the BYU faculty in 2000, Professor Thorne spent seventeen years as an editor, first for the Curriculum Department of the LDS Church and then in scholarly publishing as the Director of Publications for the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS, which was then an independent scholarly foundation and is now part of the BYU Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship). At the foundation he directed a small staff of editors in producing all FARMS publications, including two semiannual scholarly journals, a monthly newsletter, and between 10 and 15 books per year. He also served as the vice-president of FARMS and as a member of its board of directors. Born in Hawaii, Mel Thorne spent his grade school years in Oklahoma and teenage years in Illinois. After a year at the University of Illinois and a mission to South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), he finished his undergraduate studies at BYU, majoring in University Studies (an independently designed major consisting of literature and history), with a second major in philosophy. After tasting the pleasures of publishing by helping to launch a student journal at BYU (Century 2), he completed an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Kansas as preparation for a career in scholarly publishing. Beyond his family, church, and professional activities, Mel avidly (but infrequently!) pursues an interest in photography, especially nature and travel photography. He and his wife, Sandra, are the parents of two boys and two girls and have seven grandchildren.

Degrees: BA, Brigham Young U., 1976
MA, U. of Kansas, 1980
PhD, U. of Kansas, 1986

Interests:

Director, Humanities Publication Center

Internship director for editing minors

Advisor, YPublish student club

Member of faculty advisory council for the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship