Each semester, Assistant Professor of English Marti Mihalyi gives her students a self-titled fake assignment for which they do not receive credit. Mihalyi says the point of it is for students to be challenged beyond their normal class work. Senior Carly Berblinger took the assignment to heart and it paid off.

Berblinger’s poem entitled “Root” was accepted for publication by the Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, an annual journal that publishes literary non-fiction, fiction and poetry. Sigma Tau Delta is an honors society for English majors.

“I feel really honored to share work at any capacity, because language is a really powerful thing,” Berblinger said.

Berblinger said she first heard about the magazine in an advanced poetry workshop class she took her freshman year. Mihalyi is the sponsor for Baker University’s Epsilon Sigma chapter of Sigma Tau Delta.

Berblinger said that Mihalyi encouraged her to submit poetry to the magazine. Mihalyi said that it was Berblinger’s follow-through with the fake assignment that got her to this point.

“One of the things I most love about Carly is her humble demeanor, but I thought she definitely needed someone beyond her Baker professor to give further recognition,” Mihalyi said.

“Root” is about Berblinger’s connection with the Great Plains and how she loves home but sees herself leaving. Most of her poetry is about people and their connections with their surroundings, and a lot of it is also about nature.

“It’s kind of funny that they picked ‘Root’ because I have actually revised it since sending it in,” Berblinger said. “I mainly just changed the formatting, but still, I thought there was room for improvement and they liked it the way it was.”

Along with her poem being published, Berblinger was also asked to read her poem and another selection of her choice at the Sigma Tau Delta International 2015 conference on March 18-21 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She still has not decided on what else she wants to read at the convention, however, she looks forward to sharing her work.

Berblinger’s success as a poet could be attributed to opportunities she has been given while at Baker. She taught a poetry workshop class at the Topeka Women’s Correctional Facility as her senior seminar project. She had previously participated in Associate Professor of Sociology Jacob Bucher’s Inside-Out Prison class taught at the same facility.

“The women who participated in the workshop responded very well to Carly in both her design of the workshop and to her teaching/leadership style,” Bucher said. “She earned the respect of the class due to her expertise with poetry and with her interpersonal skills.”