Faculty, students discuss changes to J school classes
Faculty approved the replacement of J1010 for a new sophomore course.
Published Dec. 8, 2009
As the media change to keep in step with technology and new formats, faculty and students at the School of Journalism are looking at ways to update the curriculum.
"This is the first time in four years we've really seen this big of a push for change," senior Taylor Rausch said.
The elimination of J1010: Career Explorations in Journalism and the addition of a new class called Fundamentals of Multimedia, which students would take their sophomore year beginning in 2012, are the largest of these changes. Print and Digital News Chairman Tom Warhover said the decision to replace Career Explorations in Journalism was made at the journalism school's November faculty meeting.
In the past few weeks, students have been playing a larger and more formal part in the push for journalism school curriculum change. One such group is Journalism Students for Curriculum Innovation, an organization co-founded by convergence senior Kelsey Proud.
Proud said the organization meets weekly to "air grievances" and discuss what they believe should be changed about the curriculum.
Rausch's capstone project is also looking into possible changes for the journalism school's curriculum. Called "Letters From a Young Journalist" — a spinoff of a book called "Letters To a Young Journalist" — Rausch and the other students involved with the project called news outlets and interviewed alumni to find out what is expected from a journalism graduate upon entering the workforce.
Those conversations, combined with discussion on the project's Twitter page, were the catalyst for a student forum held last Wednesday night.
Proud said she learned of Rausch's capstone project and the discussion about the journalism school's curriculum through Twitter and assigned a hash tag, "#lfyj," to make it more accessible. Proud said the conversation "went viral" in a matter of hours.
"It kind of exploded in about an hour or two," Proud said. "We had alums weighing in from across the country."
The faculty members who were tuned into the Twitter discussion noticed the response and scheduled a student forum to discuss the curriculum last Wednesday.
Warhover said beyond that, no new classes or changes in curriculum have been discussed. But, he said that doesn't mean change isn't happening on a day-to-day basis as professors continually adapt their classes in small ways.
"[The faculty] have been implementing changes from the bottom up — from the core classes up," Warhover said. "Even if there are no big changes, we're changing our coursework every day."
More changes, including the replacement of Career Explorations in Journalism, are starting to take shape. Warhover said instead of bringing guest speakers in to speak about careers that follow the different sequences, sophomore students, beginning in 2012, will now learn how to shoot video, upload audio to the Web and perform basic multimedia tasks that are in demand by employers.
Rausch said her project had been examining the idea of dissolving the convergence sequence. This has had no formal discussion by journalism school faculty, but Rausch said the idea is based newsrooms wanting all employees to have convergence skills.
"It was a good idea when (the convergence sequence) was instituted, but we've reached the point where the term itself has no relevance because every newsroom is converged," Rausch said.
Proud said her main priority is keeping the school competitive compared to other journalism schools.
Warhover agreed the time for changes to the journalism school's curriculum is now.
"The world's changing, and we need to change with it — there's no doubt about that," he said. "It's just a question of which are the right next steps."