By JASON SHALLENBERGER
Alumni News staff
With journalism as a common interest, 12 NU student took the opportunity to visit the nation’s capital in January.
The students, two faculty members, two residence hall student advisers and one residence hall director, boarded a plane to Washington, D.C., to experience for themselves the issues they learned about in the classroom. Students’ overall reaction to the trip was enthusiastic.
The 12 students are freshman who live in Schramm Residence Hall and share an interest in journalism. The group, led by Nancy Mitchell, advertising chairwoman at NU, and Jerry Renaud, broadcasting chairman at NU, was formed, according to Renaud, to help the freshmen connect to others who are interested in mass communications.
The students take several classes together during the fall semester of their freshman year and also participate in extracurricular activities with their professors and others in their college.
Mitchell said NU is encouraging students to join learning communities because they help students build relationships with those who share like interests and help new students adjust to the university setting.
The students in the journalism community financed the January trip with the help of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications and the Schramm Residence Hall. Keith Zaborowski, resident director of Schramm, and Dean Will Norton of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications raised enough money to underwrite the trip.
“Keith and Dean Will Norton were both very instrumental in raising the money to fund the trip for us,” Mitchell said. “They both worked really hard to allow these kids this opportunity.”
Sightseeing
In D.C., the students saw many of the country’s biggest tourist attractions, according to Marisa Colaiano, a 19-year-old advertising major at NU. The students went to the White House, the Vietnam Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. A couple of students even sat in on the U.S. Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton. The students also toured the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the history of news, and the USA TODAY newspaper.
“I saw a lot of amazing stuff in D.C.,” Colaiano said. “Everyone enjoyed it. There was so much stuff to see out there that we didn’t have time to see everything we wanted to.”
The USA TODAY newspaper tour and the Newseum tour had a life-changing effect on Colaiano, she said.
“I went to D.C. majoring in broadcasting, but when I returned I changed my major to advertising, because when I toured the Newseum I was given the opportunity to read a script and see myself on tape, reading the script,” Colaiano said. “I saw myself and didn’t like what I saw, I then decided, after touring the newsroom at USA TODAY, to go into advertising.”
Renaud said it was an educational trip, but it certainly wasn’t restricted to all work.
“The trip was great fun,” Renaud said. “We saw a lot of neat stuff. The students even got to go to a hockey game.”
Renaud said although this was the first year for the learning community or any group trip, everything was so successful that it will probably become a yearly event.
“The trip went very well, so I think we will keep doing it every year,” Renaud said. “It created a comfort level for the kids. It will be interesting to see if they remain friends now, because of the time they spent together on the trip.”
Mitchell said she thought the learning community trip was a great way to get the three different areas of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications together. She said the trip was an overall success.
“The trip allowed students from advertising, broadcasting and news-editorial to come together to experience firsthand the things we’ve been talking about in class,” Mitchell said.
Last fall, Mitchell said she and Renaud were unsure if the students would build strong enough relationships with one another to make the learning community work, but they soon realized it would be just fine.
“Jerry and I were actually conducting an experiment with this trip, an experiment that allowed us to share great experiences with each other,” Mitchell said.
Learning
Community