Dear Alumni and Friends,
We’ve had a very noisy summer so far in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. Construction continues on the Don and Lorena Meier TV Studio and Newsroom. Framing has started on the control room, which will house state-of-the-art technology and equipment to produce our college newscast and all the media our students can create. Incredible opportunities like the McCaffrey Scholarship support students on the cutting edge of emerging media.
Over in The Agency, the Perry Family Photography Studio and Multimedia Classroom is getting new flooring, paint and a drop ceiling. The classroom will be ready in time for our advertising and public relations campaigns classes this fall. Check out the progress on all our construction projects here.
We wrapped up construction on the new Pepsi Unlimited Sports Lab earlier this summer. The partnership with Pepsi-Cola of Lincoln provides dedicated space for the Unlimited Sports Experience Lab and underwrites game day coverage of Husker sports on KRNU. I met CEO Kirk Anderson at the Oklahoma game in Norman last fall and construction on the lab was well underway before we made the connection that his brother, sister-in-law and nephew are all CoJMC grads. We featured Wade and Shelly Anderson in our Husker Love Stories series last spring and Hugh just graduated as a Chancellor’s Scholar in May. The CoJMC Family is everywhere!
The CoJMC Family has continued to grow over the summer. Our incoming freshmen class is up 28.6% compared to this time last year! We’re busy recruiting next year’s class through programs like the Digital Media Camp we hosted last month and the Nebraska High School Press Association J-Camp we are hosting this week.
Summer is also a great time for students to gain hands-on experience outside the college. This newsletter features stories about junior Ethan Weldon’s experience shooting video at the College World Series and recent graduate David Berman’s internship at USA Today supported by the Dow Jones News Fund.
No newsletter is complete without a couple stories celebrating our incredible faculty, staff, alumni and students. Professors emeritus John Bender and Tim Anderson will be inducted into the Nebraska Journalism Hall of Fame later this fall, four CoJMC faculty were selected as Nebraska Governance and Technology Fellows, several alumni are making big career moves, the Nebraska chapter of the National Broadcasting Society received the 2021 Model Chapter Award and 315 CoJMC students were named to the spring Dean’s List.
I’ll be visiting alumni in Kansas City later this month and in Detroit in early August. Please join me for Drinks with Dean if you are in town, and save the date for our Homecoming Celebration.
Go Big Red!
Shari