[inaudible]
I'm Tracy Lauder. I'm the chair of
the mass communications department.
I have been at Emory & Henry, I
just finished my 17th year. And,
it's a pleasure today to gather some mass
comm people around and talk about what
we do, what we love to do.
what I hope to do is I've got a few
things I wanted to go over with you just
about the program in general. And then
I have two members of our faculty here.
I wanted to have an opportunity
for you to talk with them.
And then I also have two alums and
maybe another one, joining us.
They're all busy at their
work, their day jobs today.
That might jump in and talk to you a
little bit about their experiences too.
And then I hope to leave plenty of
room for questions at the end,
and that we can answer some
questions for you. My background,
I actually came to higher ed,
when I was in my late
thirties and I started out,
I worked in magazine journalism. I
worked in Southern Living Magazine.
I worked for Cooking Light Weight
Watchers Magazine. I ran my own,
business and did agency
work in Birmingham, Alabama,
and was a copywriter and a creative
director and started teaching at Sanford
university and loved it and decided I
would go get a PhD and do that full time.
And so, um, I that's, uh, I've been in,
like I said, at Emory &
Henry for 17 years. Uh,
last year I actually left Emory
& Henry for about six months.
And I worked for Ballad Health,
which is a large healthcare organization
in Southwest Virginia and Northeast
Tennessee as a director of marketing
and communications for strategic
communication. And I've learned a lot.
It was great to learn
more about my region.
It was great to learn about
healthcare communication.
I worked with some incredible people,
including some Emory & Henry alums,
but I missed higher ed. I
missed working with students.
I missed being in a higher ed background
and Emory & Henry was fortunate.
I was lucky enough that they brought
me back in to work in the department.
So that's kind of my story. Um,
I thought what I do is start
by going over the program, the,
our program just a little bit
and as much as I hate PowerPoint.
And I hate PowerPoint with words
since I couldn't give you a handout,
I thought that I would, um,
share something with you.
And so forgive my zoom technology.
And I'm going to
This go in here. So you
all, I'll ask the question.
You can see my slides in for sure.
So I just wanted to talk a little
bit and go over some high points.
This is kind of my spiel
about the department.
And one of the things that is cool
about the mass comm program at Emory
Henry college is you don't
have to choose a track.
So if you were to go to Virginia
Tech or even some small schools,
University of Tennessee,
they're going to all say,
you have to be in TV or you
have to be in journalism,
or you have to be in public relations
or strat comm, social media,
graphic design. And at Emory & Henry,
we feel like it serves students best to
learn a little bit about everything we
feel like that helps you decide what
your passion really is. We also help,
I think it prepares
you for the job market.
So often people want people who
can do a little bit of everything.
You may even get into a job, working
at a newspaper, writing a news story,
and someone may say, but can you
shoot video and come back and edit it?
And you'll be able to say, yes,
I could do a little bit of that.
You can do a little graphic design. We
also feel like it gives you more, more,
um, latitude in the job market
when you get out of school. Uh,
but the difference is what you can.
What we do emphasize is
that you specialize the way
you want to through upper
level electives that
you'll choose to take.
And I'll share with you some of
those through the internships you do,
and through campus media.
So your experience,
you shape your education and
to do what you want to do. Um,
other way that puts you,
sets you apart is even our
college does not require a minor.
Our program does require minor. Um,
most of our students double major,
which is very doable, and we feel like
that sets you apart in the job market.
So it's really cool to
be teaching a class.
And in there I have students that
not only are mass comm majors,
but they're also experts in
at least one other thing. Um,
some of the I've listed here, some of
the more popular, uh, double majors,
you can double major or minor in
anything that interests you. Uh,
anything that interests you, we
want you to make those your degree.
And then the way our program works is
in the mass comm program is you'll get
some foundational skills courses, but
those will also be grounded in theory.
So you'll learn about media studies,
the intersection of media and culture,
persuasion theory, law, and ethics.
So we don't think it's enough
that we send you out with skills.
We want to send you out
with an understanding of the
world and your place in it
and your place as a
citizen, uh, being a, um,
a media message producer gives you
an extraordinary amount of power,
and we want you to use your
power for good in the world.
And so we'll be talking
about that. And in addition,
if you're coming to Emory & Henry,
you've chosen a liberal arts education,
so you'll get a broad based education
that will support that mass comm major and
the minor. And I put an additional note
here that, uh, if you have the option,
uh, we require statistics
and some folks will take a,
take a math at a community college.
And I always like to remind them
that we require a stats class.
Um, I mentioned that you can specialize
through upper-level electives,
and here's a list of some of the upper
level electives that we offer at least
every two years, sometimes more often.
And we also offer a lot of
special topics. Um, Dr. Finney,
who I'll introduce to you in a minute,
he's actually teaching a special topics.
This fall cross-listed with political
science on the presidential election.
And our president of the college who
has a political science degree will be
teaching that with him.
So we have the freedom to do a lot of
interesting things that will serve our
students and our kids. Well,
I, I mentioned internships.
This is where our students specialize.
Um, we require at least one,
we recommend two and most
students will do two.
but increasingly students
will do three internships.
You can do them during the academic year.
I always try to get my students into
an internship that summer after the
sophomore year, um, we have
lots of choices near campus.
Some folks coming from larger urban areas,
wonder where are you going to do an
internship in Southwest Virginia?
We have more opportunities than
we have students to place in them.
And even now we have a lot
of virtual opportunities.
Even during our COVID crisis,
we have a lot of virtual
opportunities to work in workplaces.
And if you like to say,
if you have a great aunt Edna that lives
in Denver and will put you up for the
summer, we'll help you find an
internship in Denver. So we're,
we feel like experiences where you,
that shaped who you are as a
mass communication professional.
You also can specialize through
campus media opportunities.
We have a community radio station that
broadcasts. We have our departmental, uh,
TV station, which professor Treash
will talk to you more about,
we have a student newspaper and a student
yearbook where a lot of our students
like to work as well. And then
what kind of jobs await you?
Our students go on to
do such a variety of things.
I will admit that the majority of our,
our students end up at some point in
strategic communications, media relations,
public relations, marketing, that's
where a lot of the jobs are, but many,
many of them are in
journalism and news. Um,
and we also have people that go on.
We have a alum who runs the film
studies program at George Mason,
and a lot of our students, end up in
education, journalism education,
and different types of educational
programs. And then we , um,
some students it's not as traditional
in a mass communication program,
but we do prepare students
well for graduate studies. Um,
if you go through our program, you
will be ready to go to graduate school.
If you, if you do the
things you need to do,
and that could be more of a professional
focused grad program or, um,
media and culture. And, um, Dr.
Finney may want to talk to you
a little bit more about that.
That's one of his areas of expertise.
Um, what else do you need to know?
We have a fabulous alumni network
and they're here for you. In fact,
we have three, at least
three in our room today. Um,
they love to give back offer internships,
support, informational talks,
a shadow ship. We also have a very
collegial and collaborative program.
Um, unlike, uh,
maybe some programs you're going to
get to know everybody in your major,
you're going to work
collaboratively in the class.
You find the faculty work together.
Um, it's not, you won't be alone.
Or if you joined the mass comm family
and also that our students get jobs,
even during trying times,
our students are well positioned
to apply for a variety of jobs.
I'm working with some
recent grads right now.
And some of our students also get jobs
that require a few years experience out
of school because they have so much
experience while they're in school.
I'm working with a couple of alums that
are looking at that just graduated on
their jobs right now.
So what I'd like to do now
is turn this over to, um,
Dr. Finney, who can tell you
a little about himself, um,
what his background is, how long
he's been at the college and, um,
kind of the things he specializes in and
anything else that I missed that you'd
like to add? Dr. Finney.
Okay. Uh, hey everybody. Thank you.
Uh, Dr. Lauder, uh, I'm Mark Finney.
Um,
I have been here eight years or so.
Um,
so I have a pretty
nontraditional background for a
mass communications professor.
Um, I've done a little
bit of work in radio.
I've done a little bit of
work in television. Um,
I've done a little bit of work with
newspapers, but that's not been my focus.
Um, I have a pretty academic
record when it comes to, uh,
studying mass communications. In fact, uh,
the reason that I studied
mass communications is because
I started off getting a
master's in conflict analysis
and resolution and began
to see that communication
plays a really important role in the
ways that international conflicts get,
um, uh, get pursued the way that, um,
parties interact with one another,
the way that people's come to
understand each other. And, uh,
I developed an interest in understanding
how news in particular plays a role
in the way that conflicts,
um, exist in our world,
the way we come to know
other groups of people.
And that's my area of research
today. Uh, I'm right now,
I mentioned a little while ago that
I'm doing data collection right now.
And what that has meant is
that every day, this month,
I have read tubas national
newspaper and recorded data about,
uh, the stories that they
have been covering, uh,
what the topic is that they're
covering who they are, uh,
quoting in their stories. Uh,
what kinds of opinions or ideas
are evident in their stories.
And I'll be taking that research along
with a bunch of other scholarships that
I've done on the United States and Cuba.
And using that to try to develop our
understanding of how this conflict between
these two countries, um,
has been represented, um,
both in media and also in, uh,
in person and what that might mean in
terms of the way that we interact with one
another. Uh, so my, um,
approach to mass communications is one
that's really, uh, very scholarly. Uh,
I like to think about mass comm as a, um,
a way of developing understanding, uh,
from a normative point of view and also
sort of the way that we begin to, uh,
use media, uh, purposefully and sometimes,
and purposefully to share ideas
and come to know each other,
or sometimes come to not know each
other. Um, as Dr. Lauder mentioned,
I'm teaching a class on the
presidential election this fall, um,
I'm doing that with president Wells.
The president of the college is
co-teaching the course with me,
and we are going to be looking
at the role of, you know,
the ways that we can approach the election
through our joint lenses of political
science. He's a political science
professor in mass communications.
What those two sort of scholarly
perspectives can teach us about, uh,
presidential elections here in the
United States and also in other places,
and also to do some real time
analysis of what's going on, you know,
while it's happening, which
is pretty exciting. Um,
I do take students to Cuba,
uh, fairly regularly, uh,
with a colleague in the Spanish
department. So, uh, one of the things,
none of y'all have traveled with me, uh,
one of the things that you
might want to think about doing,
and when you come to Emory &
Henry is signing up for our course,
we do a two week trip to Cuba, um,
where we, uh, visit with other,
with students from Cuba, um, at some
of their universities, and also, uh,
try to sort of understand the culture.
And we tie it typically to a
mass communications project. Uh,
last time we did the trip, we, uh,
produced a documentary
film that was then, um,
well, maybe produce is too strong,
strongly. I know we produced it. Um,
but one of our seniors
directed it and, uh,
did a lot of the posts that all of the
postproduction and put it into a pretty
cool 25 minute film about our experiences.
I think next time we go, the
plan is to, um, do a podcasting,
um, exercise where we'll
develop a series of audio, uh,
stories based on our
experiences, uh, there in Cuba.
What else do, what else
would I say, Dr. Lauder
you're muted.
There we go. Um,
that you usually teach
our media writing classes and,
um, and, and that all of our faculty
have a nice blend of, you know,
looking at the world through those lenses
as you point out, and then also, uh,
bringing, bringing all that to
the skills classes we teach.
And so appreciate you doing,
Yeah. Yeah. I teach, uh, the,
our media writing courses.
I teach intro obviously. Um, I teach
them our upper division concept courses,
and I also am one of the co-directors
of our core 300 program in core 300 is
our, um,
junior level course for the
liberal arts core courses, um,
at the college, uh, the,
this is a course that's designed to help
students develop an understanding of
themselves in the world, um,
especially in terms of, uh,
developing strong sense of civic
engagement and global citizenship.
Thank you. That was
perfect. That was perfect.
I'm gonna segue because Brent Treash is
going to be nice transition because he
is an alum of Emory & Henry's mass
comm program in 2001, I believe.
Um,
but he has recently joined our faculty
and is working on becoming a full time
member of our faculty. So I'm going
to turn it over to professor Treash
to tell you a little bit about his journey
and then his place on our faculty and
some opportunities for students.
Yeah. I come at it from a little
different direction than Dr. Finney. Um,
I come from the world of work
where I spent about 20 years. Um,
but I am an Emory & Henry
graduate class of 2001.
And I'm actually interested in Mark's
class because I was also political science
while I was at Emory and Henry.
So I would be interested in sitting in
on that class. So if I can find time,
I might sneak in every
once in a while, but, uh,
my area of concentration is electronic
media. So that's audio, video production,
and so forth. Um, like I said,
I've spent almost the last
20 years working various
communications related jobs.
Um,
my first decade I spent as
a photo journalist for a
top 100 television market,
um, where I became a pretty
accomplished videographer. Um,
but I was also a morning show producer.
I became a photographer and eventually
they sucked me into being a reporter.
So I became a reporter for the last
two years of my time in television. Uh,
I left television to return
to Emory & Henry. Um,
I just really was excited about the
opportunity to come back to my Alma mater
and serve as the director
of media relations,
where I was able to use all of these
great contacts that I had made over the
last decade to be able to help
promote and market the college, uh,
in the region. So I did
that for almost eight years,
and then I moved in, uh, I guess 2018.
I moved over to the athletic department.
I was really excited about an opportunity
over there to oversee all of the
marketing communications and game day
promotion for our 20 plus sports teams.
So it's been a really great opportunity
to be doing that. It's exciting,
it's busy. Um,
but the last few years I kind of had
caught onto the bug of really wanting to
join the faculty. It's hard to believe,
but I've been teaching in some form or
fashion in the mass comm department for
five years now.
I started out kind of doing an adjunct
position with the advanced video
production class, which is my bread and
butter. My one of my favorite classes,
I look at Megan because she had to suffer
through one of my first times teaching
that class. Um, but we have a lot of fun.
We, we, we talk a lot about not only,
um, news videography,
but we also go into all the different
forms of video that are out there.
And it's something I'm really passionate
about is finding all the new uses that
we see with video in the world of
marketing and communications. Um,
I'm involved also with EHCTV that
Dr. Lauder mentioned earlier, uh,
EHC TV is a weekly student
produced news program.
It has news, it has sports,
it has feature interviews,
and it's all done by the students.
I'm there to help advise I'm
held there to really mentor. Um,
but they do all the work. Um,
they're the ones that are responsible
for producing content. Um,
and we have a lot of fun and, you know,
I was telling Connor before
we started this call.
One of the things I'm really proud of
is investment that Emory & Henry has made
in our EHC TV studio. Um,
this fall we're debuting a brand new
professionally designed sets. Uh,
it's ginormous, it's exciting.
It's, um, it's, it's,
it's a lot different than
what we've had in the past,
and it really rivals anything that
you'll see on your evening newscasts.
So I'm really proud of what we have
there. We have great studio cameras,
we have professional lighting.
Uh, it's the real deal,
the experience that you'll get on EHC
TV, whether you're a camera operator,
whether you run our audio
board, you direct, or if
you're on, on air talent, um,
it's,
it's exactly the world of work that
you'll be experiencing once you graduate.
And, uh,
we're really excited about that
opportunity that we can provide to people.
And we also provide mentorship, you know,
I really work with our local television
stations to connect people in different
positions, to be able to really have that
feedback of what it's like out there,
what they see there's room
for improvement on. Um, so we,
we really take that opportunity to,
um, connect to the world of work.
And oftentimes that'll lead to
a good internship as well. Um,
just a little bit about me
outside of Emory & Henry,
I'm really big you'll learn on nonprofit
because communications plays a big role in
non the nonprofit world is a
really valuable skill to have. Um,
so I've been involved with an organization
called the Birthplace of Country
Music, it's in Bristol. Um,
and I serve as the vice president
for the board of directors there. Uh,
I get to meet lots and lots of people
that work in various different industries.
Uh, and I,
I really love finding opportunities
to place our mass comm professionals,
because one of the things you'll learn
about our department is that, um,
the types of jobs that are out there for
communications professionals is very,
very surprising.
There are places that you wouldn't think
that there's a need for communications
work or marketing work
or graphic design work,
but all of these places need those
skills. So there are lots of,
lots of job opportunities out there. And,
and it's one of the things I'm really
passionate about is exposing our mass comm
students to those
opportunities. So, uh, yeah,
I'm really excited about
this chapter of my life to,
to be eventually moving to the faculty
full time right now I'm in graduate
school. So, uh, you know,
I can give you some advice on that as you
start to think about that as a path as
you graduate. Um, I wanted to quit
the first week of graduate school.
I'm glad I didn't. Um, and I'm really
enjoying the process right now. So, uh,
I'm excited to see the students and,
and get back to campus this fall.
Thank you. That was perfect.
I hope the prospective students
are getting an idea of what the,
what our program is a little
bit about. I am very honored,
as busy as our alarms
are with their jobs. Uh,
particularly during this crazy time,
I've got two that joined us today,
and they're far enough along on their
career journey that they've had some
different positions.
And so I wanted to introduce them to you.
And I'm going to ask them to tell a
little bit about your career journey.
And if you want to intersect how,
you know, the program, you know,
hopefully helped you prepare
for your career journey.
So these students can get a feel of
whether our program is the right fit for
them. I'd like to start
with Sarah. She is a, uh,
2014 graduate is that
right of our program.
And she,
I'm very interested in hearing Sarah
story because she's recently moved into a
new position when she gets to that part.
I'm going to be really listening. Um,
Sarah will tell us a little bit about
you. You've got three or four minutes.
We're good. We're really good on time.
Well, so yeah, my name is Sarah Knight.
I graduated in 2014 with a major
in communications and a minor in,
um, business management. Uh, I moved
up to DC right after I graduated.
And my first job was actually for
an international nonprofit, um,
that worked with like oil rigs
and it was an event planning job.
So I got to do a lot of traveling and
event planning, but also got to use,
um,
the design skills that I learned in the
beginning and advanced design classes to
produce all of the materials along
with, um, the events that we did. Um,
and I stayed in that job for about
a year. And then I transitioned, um,
to a advertising job at the
John F. Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts up
in DC, um, and stayed
there for about five years,
did advertising for about three and then
switched into a strategic management
and project management role on
our, um, development team and our,
um,
$350 million expansion building that
we built and opened last September.
Um, after about five years,
I was offered a position for another
nonprofit up in DC called Stand Together.
Um, and I just started that
back in February, where I am a,
an account manager for our
criminal justice reform,
our poverty and our, um,
foreign policy PIs. Um,
and so with this job,
I get to kind of bring in everything I
I've learned from the first two jobs and
do a lot of, uh, strategic management,
strategic communications, um,
building media plans, um, plugging
different news outlets, um,
kind of creating projects that we
think that we're missing areas in,
especially with everything that's going
on in the world right now. And, um,
kind of seeing where we can build
on, um, some of these issues. Um,
Emory was really nice because it kind
of gave me everything that I needed for
all of these three jobs. Uh,
I don't think anywhere else I would have
gotten design experience, media law,
experience, writing experience,
project management experience. Um,
and I've used everything that I learned
throughout my four years at Emory and
the communications
department to kind of, um,
further my career up to this point.
So I don't think I would have gotten that
if it wasn't at Emory, I think. Good.
No, that was great Sarah. We might
have some questions for you, but, uh,
what a, what a successful
career you've had so far,
we're so proud of you and some great
work you're doing for the world. Um,
we also have Megan Henderson joining
us today. She's in the class of 2016.
Um, she's joining us from London. Um,
and she's going to tell you a little
bit about her, uh, career journey.
Okay. Hi, I'm Megan, I graduated in 2016.
I'm 26 years old. Uh, Emory
feels like a lifetime ago,
but it also feels like it all
just happened yesterday. Um, yeah,
a little bit about my career journey.
So I was involved in pretty
much any media related thing,
probably on Emory's campus. I did, um,
the yearbook. I did the White Topper,
which is the newspaper I did TV.
I did a little bit of radio. Um,
so probably overextended myself. But, uh,
as you swiftly learn on
a little campus, you,
you have such great opportunities.
It's hard to pass anything up. Um,
so I had a really, really stacked resume.
So I thought when I left the College
and I was really excited, um,
I thought I was going to go to grad
school, but decided against that, um,
which was probably the right
choice at the time. Um,
but that meant I went home and I wasn't
totally sure what I wanted to do. Um,
the greatest thing about my education
at Emory was that I had such a,
a wide set of skills. Um,
but it meant that I wasn't totally clear
on which ones I wanted to utilize the
most. Um, so I ended up
working a part time job,
and I also got an internship at a
nonprofit as a communications intern.
Um, in Roanoke, Virginia,
the nonprofit was called
Total Action for Progress.
They actually take a lot of
communication interns from Emory.
I know at least one other student
after me, who's interned there,
it's a great experience. Um,
but it introduced me to the world of
nonprofits and gave me a real, uh,
passion for using my
skills to help people. Um,
my partner is a British citizen,
so I relocated to London,
July of 2018. I can't believe
it's been that long. Um,
and shortly after I relocated,
I was applying to any communications
related job I could find,
particularly in the nonprofit sector
and, um, found my current position,
which is with a nonprofit
called Five Talents.
We're a small nonprofit,
we have three offices,
one in London, one in Nairobi and Kenya,
and one in, uh, Vienna, Virginia,
actually in Northern Virginia.
Um, we do primarily, um, micro,
uh, micro finance and micro
loans, um, which is, uh,
complicated,
I guess it's the only way to put it, but
Basically what happens is a, a
group or a community gets together.
They save their money together,
and then they loan that money to one
another to build small businesses. Um,
so we're effectively
empowering communities out
of poverty and breaking the
cycle of poverty so that they can
provide a better future for their,
for their children and their family. Um,
I knew nothing about
microfinance when I got this job,
I was shocked when they called me and
offered it to me. I knew nothing about,
um, Africa, about poverty
or about microfinance.
I have learned a lot in
two years, I will say. Um,
but my role now is as the
communications and events officer.
So I manage a lot of social media.
I do a lot of blogging
website management, um,
event planning, so charity events, um,
I do all external donor communications.
So I'm the person that sends out
newsletters and writes, thank you,
letters to donors who
support us. Um, yeah.
And the best part about my education is
I'm very fortunate that I use probably
every single thing that, um,
I spent my time at Emory
building up my resume with, um,
and it made me a much more
marketable candidate, uh,
when I was applying for the job. So, yeah,
I don't know. Is there anything else,
Dr. Lauder that you want me
to add? No, I think that's great.
And I think you both pointed
it out pointed at the,
the benefit of that
broad-based background.
And do either of you
have direct reports yet?
Um, I'd had one at the Kennedy center
and I have four now at this job,
I would, one of the things that I think
that college students don't think about,
but I hope that you're finding is as
you manage direct reports or you hire
people to do work for you, as
always said in the design classes,
you may not be a graphic designer, but
if you have to purchase graphic design,
you know,
what good graphic design is and you know
how to nurture and coach that out of
people. And so you, you two are moving
up now where that is indeed part of it,
even if you don't do it
yourself. That's great. Well,
Connor and Miata, Miata,
and Emily has joined us.
We have shared with you some good
background about the mass comm program at
Emory & Henry,
and we are awaiting questions and we
hope you have some good ones for us.
You can shout them out or you
can put them in the chat box,
if that feels more comfortable to
you, anything we can answer for you.
Um,
so are there any specific classes that
focus primarily on like video editing
and, uh, camera operating? Like I
heard him briefly mentioned, uh,
both of those, I think,
but, um, computer editing,
I'm very interested in if there's any
classes that fall along those lines,
I guess that, I guess that's me. So yeah,
the way it kind of
works right now, Connor,
there are two classes that you
really dig into those deep.
The first one is the 210 class was
his intro to electronic media. Um,
that's where we learn both, um,
camera operation and video
editing in that class. Uh,
it's kinda mixed in as well with the
audio component, because as you'll see,
when you take my classes, um,
bad audio can completely
ruin any good video project.
So audio also, um,
but the big class for you will be
the advanced video production class.
And that's where we'll learn. Um, not
only, uh, more advanced techniques
With the video capturing and editing,
but we also learned the various
different uses of video as well.
And in case you want
nerdy stuff, um, we, uh,
we work with Adobe premier
pro, which is really wonderful.
Oh yeah. I've been wanting to get that
editing software for a while now. Uh,
but it's, I think it's like $4 a
month, it's not even thatexpensive.
I currently use Filmora if you've ever
heard of that. Yeah. That's what I use.
So I would really be interested in
upgrading and learning how to use that.
Do you guys have access to Adobe premiere
pro that I could use on a computer and
or something in the school?
Yeah, we do. We have labs that we, a
teaching lab that professor Treash uses,
I will say that we've also used
that for the graphic design classes,
which I also teach. However,
we find that most of our mass comm majors
that are pretty serious about moving
into that, get a subscription to it,
or go ahead and purchase it
for their own computers. Um,
and for the last time I taught our
beginning, uh, publication design class.
I required students to subscribe to it
for the semester, which was $20 a month.
Um, and I kept the textbook
cost to almost nothing.
And so there's a
convenience of having that,
but most students that major will go
ahead and get the whole Adobe suite, um,
which will cover video, audio, graphic,
design, Photoshop, illustrator,
the whole thing. And they find
that they really do that. Also,
we have a very popular, um,
marriage between the art graphic design
track and the art department and the
mass comm department. And those folks
just live in the Adobe creative suite.
So they'll typically get that. So
there's kind of a move toward you can,
and you can get a student rate,
so you can investigate that on the Adobe
site and you can get a student. Right.
Awesome. Yeah. More questions.
Hmm.
So I heard one of you guys mentioned
a trip that you did to Cuba, right.
Um, so you said that we're going to do
that's something I would definitely be
interested in because I love traveling.
It would be kinda cool to connect that
with mass communication. So I heard you,
or somebody mentioned something about,
um, a project they were doing with audio.
Uh, what was that again? I don't think
I really got a clear picture for it.
Yeah. So one of the things
that we want to do, uh, uh,
it's so easy to make a trip that just
goes to a place and, and, you know,
we all behave like tourists, but you know,
this isn't an educational institution.
And so we want to try to
enhance our opportunities, uh,
to learn while we're there.
And so what we've done with this course
is that each trip we do a different sort
of a mass comm project
alongside with it. Um,
the last two trips, as
I mentioned, we did,
or the last year we did a
very successful, um, uh,
documentary film the trip
before that we did a,
not as successful documentary
film. And then, uh, the,
for our next trip is to
do it as a podcast course.
So Jess that's okay.
Right. And it'll be an audio podcast.
And I think the plan is going to
be for students to work in teams,
to develop stories
essentially that they'll, um,
produce while we're on the trip. Um,
and then we'll take back and we will
post produce them, uh, you know,
after we come back. So, you know,
we'll, um, collect a lot of content.
We'll ask students to think about, um,
what kinds of stories they are hearing,
what kinds of stories that they feel like
are important to tell either their own
stories of what they're
experiencing while they're there,
or maybe the stories of people that they
encounter on the trip and then into a
shore dive, you know, uh,
pieces that we can run as,
as sort of audio, audio, um, podcasts.
Awesome.
So like interview people and just
discuss what your own experiences are and
stuff. That sounds very fascinating. Yeah.
I think, uh, one of the most, uh,
popular components of the, uh,
documentary last time was the,
um, the, what do we call them? We,
uh, we, we made students do a sort
of personal blogs every night, right?
We gave them a prompt and we asked them
to record just a few minutes of them
talking, um, about what they
did during the day. And, uh,
you know,
it was a great way for students to
reflect on what they were seeing and what
they were doing in Cuba. And, uh,
it turned out to be a very productive
way to develop content as well. Awesome.
To add to what Dr. Finney
said, in addition to this,
the great opportunity
through the department, all,
all Emory & Henry students are required
to have some sort of international
experience and there's different ways
you could do that. In addition to Dr.
Finney's class, I believe
Megan did an internship abroad.
Um, you know, I said you
could do internships anywhere.
If you came up with some sort of audio
video project that you wanted to go to
another place and do, I'm sure that
one of us could mentor such a project.
We actually even have an Appalachian
a semester, a trail. Then I think Dr.
Finney has mentored a project for someone
who hiked the Appalachian Trail one
semester. So there's lots of ways
to individualize some travel, um,
to wherever you want to go and tie that
into coursework or media projects in a,
in a variety of ways,
including if you did a semester abroad
and you wanted to take some communication
courses in another country and transfer
those back in as electives in our
programs.
So a lot of good opportunities
to individualize and make
this program your own
Awesome. I would definitely
want to do something abroad.
I'm actually on the
outdoor adventure team. Uh,
so I was actually considering
doing the Appalachian, uh,
thing for a semester,
depending on circumstances.
Like maybe I want to go somewhere
else. I'm not really sure yet.
And you can do multiple
things. So, I mean,
you can to Cuba and go on the Appalachian
Trail and do an internship with Megan
in London, you can, you can, you know,
possible to make multiple
things work awesome.
Emily or Miata. Do you
have any questions for us?
Yes.
I don't have any questions.
No. Did we answer everything?
Yeah, did a pretty good
job. Excellent. Okay.
Yeah.
Great. Thank you guys so
much. That was fantastic.
And I greatly appreciate the alumni being
able to come on and take time out of
your busy day. Um,
just to come and talk to our students
and also for us to be able to research
collate this information for incoming
students, prospective students,
um, anything like that. So anybody,
if you have any questions after those,
you're more than welcome to reach out
to myself. Reach out to Dr. Lauder, Dr.
Finney, Brent. Um, at any
point during this process,
whether you're coming this
fall, in the spring next year,
definitely let us know any questions.
We're always more than happy to
answer for you. And I'll add to that.
If you go to our website and you
just quick search mass comm, our,
our webpage will come up.
There's a tab for faculty.
All of us are listed there
with our email addresses,
feel free to email any
time we'll connect you.
I'm happy to answer any questions that
you might have or connect you to someone.
We, we had two alums here today,
but if you're interested in a particular
area and you would like to talk to an
alum working in that area, I'm happy to
connect you with someone. I, you know,
I, I had a prospective
student one time said, well,
I want to come to Emory & Henry,
but you don't have a marketing major.
And I said, well, we don't,
but we have a lot of students who
literally have marketing manager,
former students in their title.
And Sarah was one of the alums that
talked to that student. Um, so we have,
we have students doing
all sorts of things.
So if there are alums doing all sorts
of things, happy to connect you, um, to,
to someone in that way.
Well thank you all so much.
And everybody have a good evening
and Megan have a good night.
Thank you all. Thank you guys. Thanks
Tracy. For the opportunity. Connor,
Emily Miata, you take care,
everybody.
