Dear Alums and Friends of CoJMC,
Happy New Year!
Yes, it’s our New Year and, for me, the bright fresh back-to-school days of August and September seem much more like a time for resolutions than the deep dark nights of January.
One of the beauties of the annual academic cycle is this opportunity to hit “restart,” to rethink and refresh our activities and habits at work and at home, with the intention, always, of doing things better.
So here are some of my resolutions, areas I will be focused on at CoJMC this 2018-2019 academic year:
- My focus will continue to be on the two challenges we’ve been given by the UNL administration: first, build a positive, team-focused, integrated culture for the workplace of our future, and second, innovate on our curriculum with exciting new opportunities for our students.
- The response to the first challenge of culture includes college-wide monthly meetings that include all full- and part-time faculty and all of our staff. Even our new graduate assistants, all twelve of them, are now part of our meetings. Bringing us all together frequently, instead of meeting just in our separate sequences, is a way to break down any old-fashioned siloed thinking, something happening in our industries as media converges faster than ever. Including the youngest members of our community as well as the professionals who teach a class or two for us will help ensure we are keeping up-to-date in our thinking.
Another part of our culture includes our small groups, nicknamed our “pods.” Each group includes members of each of our four majors, plus staff, grad assistants and adjunct faculty. The goal of these small groups is to intentionally structure ways our community members can get to know one another, to understand and build respect for each other’s expertise and responsibilities. We tried the pod concept spring semester, and we got such a good response, we decided to do it again, with new groupings.
The first assignment for our newly assigned pods is to talk about ways to incorporate our “One Book, One College” into our classes and activities this fall. The book, “Make Your Home Among Strangers,” is a fictional work by a UNL English professor, Jennine Capo Crucet, and tells the story of a young Cuban American woman who moves from her neighborhood in Miami to a large school in the north, where no one looks, acts or thinks like her.
Would you be interested in conversation – in person or online – about the book? I’m interested in your thoughts about a virtual and/or physical Book Club for our alums and friends. Please email your thoughts on this: astruthers2@unl.edu
- Our second challenge, curriculum, will involve a lot of work to determine what is fundamental to our students’ education across all majors and what new knowledge and skills we should incorporate.
We have a terrific start in the consideration of fundamentals thanks to an important review of our writing courses throughout the college, led by graduate assistant Jessica Fargen Walsh. Access her committee’s report here if you are interested in their recommendations, which we plan to incorporate as we launch a new pair of courses about writing, reporting and editing.
My position is that every student in our college should take rigorous journalistic writing classes, since all will graduate with a Bachelor’s of Journalism from a College of Journalism and Mass Communications. I believe the fundamental skills of journalism are as important to public relations, broadcasting, advertising and sports media graduates as they are to those who want to focus on what we used to call “news editorial.”
What do you think of having a requirement that all majors in our college take basic writing, reporting and editing? I’d love to hear your thoughts: astruthers2@unl.edu
To explore new knowledge and skills that could be valuable to our students, we launched our pop-ups in the spring. Five different one-credit-hour classes met with success, and we have a dozen on the schedule for this fall! Our students will have opportunities to learn the latest creative approaches and skills around digital design; new audio storytelling methods in our podcasting pop-up; and even a script-writing pop-up offered by alum and guest prof Michael Swoboda, who will come from Los Angeles to lead a weekend bootcamp for those interested in commercial or entertainment work. See a complete list of our fall 2019 pop-ups here.
What pop-ups do you think we should try? This low-cost, low-risk way of testing curriculum allows us to push into areas our formal curriculum may not allow. Let me know your ideas: astruthers2@unl.edu
- All along the way, as a unit, we will work to tell our story consistently and frequently, to more stakeholders, through more channels. This alumni newsletter is one of those efforts; you all represent an important part of our CoJMC family, our history and our legacy. Our social media – Twitter, Instagram and Facebook – is rich and exciting and better than ever; our website has undergone major updates to better reflect who we are now and who we are becoming; our print materials and collateral, from ads in publications to promotional “red bar” sheets about our majors to swag bags for graduating students, are all refreshed and beautiful. We hope you’ll follow, like, share, retweet, sport your branded tee shirts or sweatshirts, and share the pride of being a J-School alum.
These are just a few of my resolutions. Of course, I’m also going to eat healthy, sleep more, lose weight, clean my house and call my mom every day.
Do you use this time of year to make resolutions? Get out a freshly sharpened number 2 pencil or actually, hop on our Facebook page to tell us what “back to school” means for you. I’ll look forward to hearing from you!
