History and development of SfEP

 

Meeting: Wednesday 29 February 2012
Emeritus Faculty, Building 3T, Fellows Lane Cottage, The Australian National University
6.30 pm, networking and nibbles from 6.00 pm
>> Find the Emeritus Faculty using Google maps

Val Rice will be the Society’s guest speaker at its first meeting in February 2012. Her talk will cover the history and development of Society for Freelance Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) from its first meeting in 1988 to the present day.

Val joined the SfEP in 1995 and is now an Advanced member. She has also been awarded the City and Guilds Licentiateship in Editorial Skills (LCGI). She originally trained as a bilingual secretary at the Lycée Français de Londres and worked as a secretary before training as a teacher of shorthand and typing at Pitmans Central College in London.

Val taught business studies, IT and secretarial skills in secondary schools and tertiary colleges. She also worked as an examiner for Pitmans, the London Chamber of Commerce, the Royal Society of Arts (now OCR) and Edexcel (London University) and wrote shorthand speed examination passages for OCR. She ran her own secretarial centre from 1984 until 1988 providing secretarial training, editing and word processing services. She also worked with her husband to set up his chartered accountancy practice in the same premises and acted as his office manager.

In 1999, Val was elected to the committee of the Society for Freelance Editors and Proofreaders and became treasurer in 2001. Following the society’s incorporation and its re-launch as the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) in 2003 she became finance director and company secretary.

She retired from SfEP in September 2007 and she was awarded honorary membership. Valerie’s booklet—Starting Out: Setting up a small business—was published in 2006 and the first in a series of SfEP guides. She is now working on the third edition.

Now Val concentrates on copy-editing and development editing but spends as much time as possible with her husband and family, including three grandsons. When she comes to Australia she will visit her youngest son and his wife in Sydney and meet her new granddaughter who is due to be born in January.

 
 
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