Communication & Journalism 2007 Annual Report
Yogi Berra is credited with having said, “It’s Deja Vu all over again!” While he made the statement some years ago, the words could apply to the Department of Communication & Journalism (COJO) today. It seems that every year we report about some new initiative that impacts either the faculty workload, student numbers, or both. This past year and the coming year are no exception, and this time the new impact is an emphasis on internationalization. Either this year or next, no fewer than 6 faculty will be involved in international ventures. This mirrors our graduate program, which has recently taken on a decidedly international look. This new emphasis on internationalization will be detailed under the “Diversity” section of this report since the new perspectives gained by our faculty and students should pay huge dividends for UW.
Despite the new initiatives with which COJO seems to deal every year, and to the credit of the faculty and staff, we have incorporated these new initiatives without diminishing our importance to the University and the A&S College. In looking at important A&S statistical categories. COJO is third in the number of majors, fourth in the number of credit hours offered, second in summer school income, and first in terms of the lowest FTE. We are the only A&S Department in the top five in more than two of those categories. We are able to achieve these results because of a very strong faculty. Yet, this efficiency is achieved without any negative impact on our other ongoing initiatives.
These ongoing initiatives include:
•This past year was COJO’s second as part of the Synergy Program for at-risk students. Justin Stewart developed five special sections of Public Speaking to help these students meet the “O” requirement and is a major part of the program’s award-winning success.
•We recently completed the fourth year in which the “O requirement has been in place and continue to be the primary provider of the course with which most students fill this requirement meaning that just about every student at UW now passes through our program. Beau Bingham developed a special section for severely apprehensive public speakers—a course that allows these students to overcome their apprehension so that they can graduate. The success of this special course is certainly a feather in UW’s cap.
•To aid in student success, the Oral Communication Center continues both to assist students in the public speaking classes and to provide feedback to anyone on campus who must give an oral presentation. The success of the Center has been so great that his past year, 1,161 students took advantage of its services. The lab is also one facility that is part of the LeaRN initiative, and the lab’s director is a member of the LeaRN Board.
•Due to the increased demand for public speaking courses, our graduate program grew as we were awarded new assistantships. However, the program grew disproportionately large even beyond the number of new GAs. Whereas we had 17 Masters students six years ago, we now have 32. Most impressive is the success of the Graduate Student Committee in recruiting international graduate students and placing them in the classroom. This success will be detailed in the “Diversity” section.
•COJO is now one of the largest departments in terms of student credit hours and the number of majors. Under criteria developed by Vice President for Academic Affairs Myron Allen COJO was labeled a “Workhorse” department. We are one of four departments in the A&S College to offer more than 6,000 student credit hours. Math is first with 16,500, and COJO, with 10,500 is close behind English and Languages with 10,900 each. Our ratio of student credit hours to faculty is 2nd largest behind Statistics.
•COJO is one of four A&S departments to service more than 200 majors. With our 338 majors, we are third behind Psychology and Biology. Much of this growth was due to a resurgence in our Public Relations program about six years ago. Recent growth has come in our Journalism program where the number of majors is up almost 40% in 5 years.
While responding to these impacts, the department continued to post a record of excellence. Some major accomplishments this year include:
•Our students and faculty continued to gain recognition by winning awards for excellence. Among this year’s awards are an A&S Top Teacher, an A&S Extraordinary Merit in Teaching, a Mortar Board Top Prof Award, an A&S Outstanding Graduate, a Spitilari Award finalist, two Phi Beta Kappa’s and a student Ellbogen.
•The debate team was again among the University’s most successful intercollegiate competitors and won 5 national tournaments while 3 debaters received national recognition for their contributions to the debate community. We share in the excitement of the national championships won by the Nordic Ski and women’s basketball teams and are pleased that UW’s athletic teams are catching up to its academic teams, which is the way it should be. Most other universities seem to have it the other way around.
•COJO continued its record of service to its external constituencies and this year sent three faculty to Sheridan to present a forum on the role of Journalism in the community.
•A new Journalism Major was implemented this fall at UW/CC to go along with our existing Communication Major there.
•Research productivity continued, and for the fourth year in a row the number of accepted refereed works among our faculty exceeded expectations, this year by over 70%.
2006-07 was an academic year in which COJO continued to add new initiatives while at the same time dealing with the impacts of past initiatives. The department responded positively to these impacts and continued to play an important role in UW’s mission.
2. Academic Planning Implementation
COJO 1: Develop a plan that will allow us to continually evaluate the function of the Oral Communication Lab to determine whether it is meeting UW’s needs.
•The Oral Communication Center served 1,156 students this past year, up from 1,091 students a year ago and from 559 students three years ago.
•The new permanent director and former interim director, Beau Bingham, continued to develop his system in which he trains and staffs the Center with students who receive internship credit for their work. With the help of these trained assistants, the Center was open 30+ hours per week during the past year.
•To further train the students and access new ideas on the functioning of Oral Communication Centers, Prof. Bingham and his student interns attended the National Association of Communication Centers Conference in Greensboro, N.C. Bingham received grants of $1,000 from PACMWA, $700 fro LeaRN, and $1,000 from COJO to fund the expenses of the conference.
•The Oral Communication Lab Advisory Committee, which was established last year, continued to review the operation of the Center. Committee goals for the Center in the coming year are to continue the development of a plan to keep the Center open in the summers, and to develop a budget to allow for the operation and promotion of the Center. Ongoing goals of the committee are to continue to increase knowledge of and access to the Center by all University personnel.
COJO 2: If necessary, implement additional sections of Public Speaking in the coming year to meet this demand.
•The temporary APL who was hired last year to work with the Synergy program continued to teach the public speaking courses for its students.
•Demand for the public speaking courses was such that 2 sections had to be added in both Fall 2006 and Spring 2007 and temporary personnel hired to teach them.
•Previously we were able to monitor demand for the course through wait lists. The conversion to WyoWeb made this impossible, so we attempted to use past demand as a predictor for current demand.
•We attempted to accommodate the increased enrollment of 150 students at UW by offering additional sections of public speaking in the summer. Demand for the summer course this year did not increase. However, demand for the course in Fall 2007 semester is such that the course is already full before any incoming freshmen begin to register. This would indicate a backlog is beginning to develop.
•Rebecca Roberts, who directs the teaching of Public Speaking by our graduate assistants, will take sabbatical leave next spring and will investigate developing new O courses for groups such as pre-professional and honors students.
COJO 3: Determine and maintain a budget for the UW Debate Team so that it remains nationally competitive.
•Funding levels for the Debate Team were increased this year, and the team enjoyed the continued success that has now become an annual occurrence.
•After the Debate team overspent its budget by a significant amount last year, analysis by the Department Head and Dean’s Office determined that budget planning was insufficient. A budget was developed and implemented this year. Not only did the team live within the budget, it repaid $6,000 of the debt from last year. A budget will now be developed for each academic year.
COJO 4: Further the development efforts that will allow us to build on the Debate Team’s current successes through solicitations of friends and alumni. These efforts need to be developed, and additional funding sources need to be identified.
•The team initiated a fundraising and grant writing effort to help support its summer institutes.
•The alumni solicitation that began last year was continued and this year raised $20,000. We will continue our efforts to publicize the debate team’s success and attempt to use this success as a springboard for additional development activities.
COJO 5: Establish a Debate Hall of Fame to honor past UW debaters and supporters.
•Activity on this initiative has stalled due to the active tournament schedule that the Forensics Team Director had to pursue this past year.
COJO 6: Establish a concentration in Video Production: A joint effort between Communication & Journalism and Theatre & Dance, all the required courses but one are already part of the curriculum.
•Prior to the realization of this action item, the funding needs to be secured for the equipment necessary to teach the courses. A proposal for funding will be submitted for Heywood Funds, but those applications are due at the same time as this report.
•We will continue to seek funding to purchase the equipment required for the Video Production Concentration. Should funding become available, plans to implement the concentration will be developed in 2007-08.
COJO 7: Establish an Interdisciplinary Writing Concentration: This is a joint program to be administered by COJO and English, and it would include any other department at UW of the student’s choosing.
• An initial framework for this concentration has already been developed. Plans to implement the concentration will be developed during 2007-08.
COJO 8: Continue development efforts with the Journalism community and seek out ways to expand these efforts to those who graduated in Communication.
•COJO faculty continue to serve as a News Council for the Wyoming Press Association, which arbitrates disputes between newspapers and their readers.
•The department plays an active role in the Wyoming Press Association Hall of Fame.
•We created a special summer class to be taught by alumni and Wyoming newspaper personnel. The professionals who came to campus to teach are Dan Haley, Editorial Page Editor for the Denver Post, Linda Fantin, an investigative reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune, and Angus Thuermer, News Editor of the Jackson Hole News and Guide.
•Three faculty members, George Gladney, Eric Wiltse, and Ken Smith traveled to Sheridan to present three different seminars for the Center for a Vital Community on the role of journalism in the community.
•We continue to work with the A&S Development Staff to create a new $50,000 endowment that will fund recruiting and placement activities for Journalism students. To date we have raised over $10,000.
COJO 9: Explore the means to provide better outreach opportunities that will allow teachers and professionals to complete their Masters or certification through a restructuring of the format of existing courses.
•Eric Wiltse was granted a sabbatical for Fall 2006 to explore the implementation of online courses. Using the expertise he gained, he will work with the Director of Graduate Studies to develop possible implementation strategies for online graduate courses.
3. Teaching
COJO continues to play an essential role in teaching at UW:
•Our 10,500 credit hours place us among the top four in the A&S College.
•We continue to be one of the departments involved in the award-winning Synergy Program for at-risk students and with the LeaRN initiative.
•This year we began teaching classes for the new Bachelors in Journalism Degree at UW/CC, which complements the Communication Degree that we already offer there.
•The Oral Communication Center continues its record of service to UW. As noted, Director Beau Bingham now uses student teaching assistants to keep the Center open almost 40 hours per week. To improve their competence, he received the grant money to take them to a communication center conference in Greenville, N.C.
In addition to our development of new programs, we have continued efforts to ensure the quality of our existing instruction. Many of our efforts are aimed at the 11 graduate assistants who teach in our department. These efforts include:
•All GAs attended the Graduate School teaching seminar as well as a 3-day training session offered by the department before classes began.
•New GAs enrolled in COJO 5900—Teaching Practicum—with Rebecca Roberts, a 1-credit class that involved weekly discussions, peer evaluations, readings about and research into teaching, and completion of a teaching portfolio.
•All GAs were required to attend a weekly meeting with course director Rebecca Roberts to assess their progress.
•To measure their progress, grading was monitored, and a class was observed at least once during the semester for each GA.
Examples of the quality of instruction offered by our graduate students include:
•The average student course evaluation for all graduate assistants during 2006-07 was a highly respectable 4.03.
•The high evaluations were achieved without grade inflation because the average GPA in the courses taught by our graduate assistants was a 2.8.
•Seth Ellsworth, a graduate assistant with our debate team, was named the winner of an Ellbogen Student Teacher Award.
Examples of the quality of instruction offered by all members of the department during the past Academic Year include:
• 85.5% of the courses taught by our faculty received student evaluations higher than 4.0 on a 5-point scale. Three faculty, including Mike Brown, Conrad Smith, and Shalee Turner, did not receive a student evaluation lower than 4.5 during the year. Overall, 65% of our faculty members did not receive an evaluation lower than 4.0, while 94% of our faculty members had average evaluations above 4.0.
•The evaluations did not come at the expense of grade inflation. Our overall GPAs in lower-division, upper-division, and graduate-level courses were all below the A&S College and UW averages.
•Our faculty continued to win teaching awards. Associate Professor Mike Brown was named a Top 10 Teacher in the A&S College. Rebecca Roberts was presented an A&S Extraordinary Merit in Teaching Award. Cindy Price was named to host a Trustee in her class as part of the new Take A Trustee to Class Program.
•Indicative of the excellence in instruction in our department is the Forensics team, which is now recognized as one of the top squads in the country after ranking in the top-25 nationally. UW debaters won 5 tournaments, had 9 speakers win individual first-place awards, and had 5 speakers win the best-in-tournament. Graduate Assistant Seth Ellsworth was named Critic of the Year for our region. Forensics Director Matt Stannard was named Coach of the Year by the Val Browning Foundation. It cannot be emphasized enough that the team competes in the academic realm, and we believe its success is indicative of the commitment to and quality of oral communication instruction at UW.
During 2006-07, COJO followed the new Peer Review Guidelines that the department implemented in 2004-05.
Articulation: Nine faculty members including Beau Bingham, Mike Brown, Gracie Lawson-Borders, Frank Millar, Tracey Patton, Rebecca Roberts, Ken Smith, Justin Stewart, and Carol Tarantola attended the annual Articulation Conference of Communication scholars hosted by COJO in Laramie in September. Nineteen faculty from four community colleges and the University were present at the meeting. The primary topics of discussion were the changes in the curriculum at UW and how that impacts the other colleges, assessment, and strategies for Oral Communication Labs.
4. Research
In the past, research has been one of the least productive areas in our department. For the fourth year in a row, our department met or exceeded expectations. Our normal expectation is one refereed publication for each faculty member per year. This year, our 7 faculty with research expectations produced 12 refereed publications. Faculty who exceeded expectations included Sandy Hsu, Gracie Lawson-Borders, and Tracey Patton.
Our Masters students continued their research involvement with national academic organizations. This past year, one student presented a paper at the Broadcast Education Conference, two presented papers at the Visual Communication Conference, and one presented a paper at the East-West Symposium. This June, 8 graduate students will present papers at the Visual Communication Conference.
Professor Conrad Smith qualified as a Fulbright Scholar and will spend the coming year in the Czech Republic as part of his Fulbright commitment.
5. Service and Outreach Activities
COJO has a very visible and vocal external constituency in the state’s press. To some degree, they view the department as a microcosm of the university, and the manner in which they depict UW can depend on their perception of the department. We have worked hard to create strong ties with the state’s press at multiple levels—through the Wyoming Press Association (WPA), through the Wyoming High School Press Association, and with Student Publications (the Branding Iron. Frontiers magazine, and the Owen Wister Review). Our activities involving these groups this past year include:
•The department coordinated a job fair on campus in February to facilitate placement of our students with Wyoming newspapers.
•The department has a continuing development effort with the WPA that would establish an endowment to fund the recruitment and placement of Journalism students. Currently we have raised over 25% of our goal.
•Our department is now in its fourth year serving as a News Council for Wyoming newspapers. A News Council is an organization that serves as a arbiter in disputes between newspapers and their readers.
•COJO continues to play an active role in the Wyoming Newspaper Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is housed in the department offices, and Ken Smith is a permanent appointment to its selection committee.
•Conrad Smith and Ken Smith presented workshops at the Wyoming High School Press Association convention.
•Our department continues its involvement with Student Publications. George Gladney served on its board of directors. The editors of two of the three student publications—Lesley Lipska at The Branding Iron, and Kristen Leis at Frontiers Magazine, were majors in our department.
In addition to traditional service on University and College committees, our department served the university in some unique manners:
•Mike Brown continues to oversee the Wyoming Internet Student Radio station (WISR) that he established. He also continues to serve as a Vice-President for La Radio Montanesa, the Hispanic radio station that is now in its fourth year on the air in Laramie.
•Tracey Patton was selected to represent the A&S College at the London Semester during Spring 2007.
•Cindy Price had her P.R. classes performing service for departments, agencies, and businesses throughout the University and the Laramie community. This year, the list included 50 agencies including the Dean of Students Office, the Non-traditional Student Group, SAFE Ride, Environmental & Natural Resources, and the Athletic Department.
•Matt Stannard continued to increase the visibility of oral communication at UW. He hosted a debate camp for high school students that brought about 60 students to the UW campus and a college camp that attracted 150 students to UW. Team members presented 2 campus debates open to the public about Iran and the minimum wage.
In addition to traditional service to academic organizations such as manuscript review and membership on editorial boards, other noteworthy service included:
•Beau Bingham serves on the LeaRN board of directors.
•Mike Brown serves as Editor of the Radio Studies Journal.
•George Gladney serves on the editorial boards of two journals, Mass Communication and Society and Newspaper Research Journal.
•Sandy Hsu serves as Vice Head of the Communication Apprehension and Avoidance Division of the National Communication Association.
•Tracey Mahoney serves on the National Advisory Board of the Communication Honor Society Lambda Pi Eta.
•Tracey Patton serves as President of the Organization for Research on Women and Communication, and she serves as an editorial board member for the National Women’s Studies Association Journal.
•Cindy Price serves as the Vice Head for the Media Management & Economics Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
•Ken Smith serves on the editorial board of Visual Communication Quarterly.
6. Enrollment Trends/Recruitment and Retention Activities
After a rapid period of growth, the number of undergraduate majors stabilized for a couple of years at about 325. Enrollments are once again on the upswing with the number of majors at 338 this year with additional increases expected next year.
•The increase is due to a jump in both Communication and Journalism majors. The number of Communication majors has increased from 194 to 213. The number of Journalism majors has increase over 30% in the past five years to 125.
•After an initial jump in the number of student credit hours three years ago due primarily to the “O” requirement (we added 17 more sections of public speaking), our enrollment figures continued at about the same level, which is 10,500 credit hours. Demand for our other course offerings remains high, and as in previous years, almost all of our upper-division courses filled prematurely.
•Our graduate program has also increased significantly in the past five years, jumping from 17 Masters students in 1999 to 32 by Fall of 2006.
We have tried to monitor our course offerings—especially public speaking—to determine if we are offering a sufficient number of sections to meet University demands. Waiting lists for public speaking had been roughly 100 students each semester a year ago until new sections were added at the last minute to meet demand. We lost the ability to track demand through waiting lists due to the new WyoWeb system. During 2006-07 we added two sections of Public Speaking at the last minute, and both filled immediately. We also tried to offer additional sections of Public Speaking in the summer to offset impact during the regular year. However, our additional summer classes did not fill, which may be due to an unwillingness of students to remain on campus in the summer. Our other concern with enrollment trends was that the growth in graduate student numbers began to tax our tenure-track faculty’s ability to serve on graduate committees. The hiring of a new tenure track faculty member may help alleviate this problem.
A. Undergraduate Recruitment
While many of our students make the decision to major in our department after enrolling at UW, we continue to actively recruit high school students. Our primary activities this past year included:
•The High School Debate Institute hosted by our department’s debate team brings prospective students to campus, and this past summer, about 60 high school students attended the camp.
•Also in the summer, the debate team hosted the Wyoming Debate Cooperative, which brought students from Wyoming’s community colleges to campus.
•Conrad Smith and Ken Smith presented workshops at the Wyoming High School Press Association convention.
•Our department was represented by a member of the faculty at all of the Discovery Days events. Faculty who took part include Sandy Hsu, George Gladney, Justin Stewart, Beau Bingham, and Cindy Price. Justin Stewart served as an advisor for Transfer Orientations and Freshmen Orientations.
•For recruiting, the web site includes pages for undergraduate and graduate students that provide information on how to apply to the programs, degree requirements, scholarship and assistantship opportunities, etc. In addition, many stories in the newsletter first appeared on the web page.
•Our department has a tiered process for providing information for prospective students depending on their interest. It includes sending letters and e-mails, inviting them to campus, meeting with visiting students, and sending a letter of welcome and assigning an advisor after admission.
B. Undergraduate Retention
•Advising is the department’s major student retention activity and once again advising was a major priority in the department. All advising is done by faculty, and all faculty members have an advising component in their job descriptions. We advocate the reimplementation of advising awards because in the past they certified the excellent quality of advising offered by the COJO faculty.
When new students enter our department, they are assigned an advisor whose background closely matches the students’ areas of interest. However, students are also informed they have the right to select their own advisors. Our faculty is kept abreast of curricular changes by Advising Coordinator Justin Stewart at faculty meetings. Department Head Ken Smith works with new faculty to prepare them for advising.
•A second major area of student retention involves scholarships, and this past year we awarded $60,000 in debate scholarships to 18 students, and $13,000 in regular scholarships to 12 students in our department. In order to recognize all our student achievements, we again hosted a student awards reception that was attended by about 50 people in April.
•Under the direction of Tracey Mahoney, the department’s honorary, Lambda Pi Eta, is now in its fourth year. This year the chapter inducted 23 new members.
•COJO continues to offer one of the largest internship programs at the University allowing our students to earn credits while gaining practical experience and to keep on track toward graduation by earning credit at summer jobs. We had 92 students register for internship credit this past year and internships accounted for 140 student credit hours this past summer alone. Our program also oversees the interns at Walt Disney World.
•Information about scholarships, advising week, and faculty and student accomplishments are all published and updated on our Web site.
C. Graduate Recruitment
•Our primary activities for graduate recruitment are at academic conferences, at debate tournaments, and in conjunction with International Programs.
•Our efforts at recruiting international graduate students have been particularly successful. This past year, we added new graduate students from the Philippines and Russia with continuing graduate students from Kenya and China.
7. Development and Public Relations
A. Development
•As a department with limited grant opportunities available, a major source of our revenues is summer school. Under an aggressive summer school plan, our summer revenues grew by $10,000 in four years and were now at $30,479 in 2006. Early indications are that summer revenue for 2007 will remain at this level.
We also began to implement other development activities that offered longer range funding potential. These include:
•In conjunction with the Wyoming Press Association (WPA), COJO continued its involvement in the Wyoming Press Association Hall of Fame. The fifth class of inductees will be added at the Press Association’s annual summer convention.
•In conjunction with Dale Walker from the A&S Development Office, we continued to work on a plan with the WPA that would raise a $50,000 endowment. To date, we received pledges for more than $10,000.
•As a result of our assessment reports, we plan to repeat a new course in which we brought a different member of the working press to campus each week. We hope to turn these “professorships” into a development activity.
•This May we offered a special summer class that was taught by two alumni and a prominent member of Wyoming’s press. One of the alumni is the Editorial Page Editor at the Denver Post, and another is one of the top reporters at the Salt Lake Tribune.
•The highly visible success of our debate team has opened the door to new development possibilities. This past year, the team worked with the UW Foundation and the Office of the President to fund the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence that was held on the UW campus in March. We also hope to capitalize on the team’s success through activities such as the establishment of a Wyoming Debate Team Hall of Fame.
•Continued development efforts with donor Gloria Berg came to fruition, and this spring we offered the first Ralph Berg Memorial Scholarships totaling $1,000.
•We make a point to respond to every donor. The chair sends a note of thanks to all donors and makes a personal phone call of thanks to those providing larger gifts.
•All scholarships were awarded, and the recipients were required to write letters of thanks to the donors.
B. Public Relations
•Our primary public relations effort is through our twice-annual newsletter that we use to keep in touch with alumni and friends. Each issue includes faculty, alumni and student news that highlights their achievements. In addition, front-page stories focus on accomplishments that are particularly noteworthy. For instance, the winter 2007 issue included a story about an alumni who is now the press secretary for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Other stories introduced a new faculty member and a new academic professional. Another article was a follow-up about a faculty member’s Fulbright Scholarship trip to Poland
•Our debate alumni also receive a separate newsletter targeted specifically for them.
•We maintain strong relationships with Wyoming newspaper publishers through our activities with the WPA, and with Wyoming High School Journalism teachers through our activities with the Wyoming High School Press Association.
C. Web Page
In addition to the information about recruiting and retention cited above, our Web pages also provide information about development and public relations.
•For development, stories about alumni are published, and a link to the UW Foundation Give Online page is included.
•For public relations, information about the department’s annual graduation and awards reception is published, as well as articles about outstanding achievements by students, faculty and alumni.
The web page is updated on an as-needed basis. Last academic year, the main page was updated at least monthly, and often every week as new information became important to disseminate. The department has a Web Site Committee that provides ideas for enhancing the web site.
8. Classified and Professional Staffing
This past year, COJO had continuing changes to its staff. After the loss of one Office Associate a replacement was recruited and hired. Training of the new staff member proceeded quickly, and her work is now exemplary. Our senior staff member continues to be very productive. The faculty shows confidence in her abilities to run the office smoothly, and she did a superb job of training our new Office Associate.
Staff does not handle Web maintenance, advising, or other duties associated with faculty.
9. Diversity
In terms of diversification, COJO may now offer one of the most diverse faculties at UW. This year the department added Associate Professor Gracie Lawson-Borders who will serve as the new Director of the African-American Studies Program. Whereas six years ago our faculty was 100% Caucasian and 31% female, in the coming year it will be 77% Caucasian and 43% female, including one faculty member who is Asian and two who are African-American.
During the past year COJO conducted a search and encouraged diverse candidates to apply through the normal UW recruitment procedures and by sending Tracey Patton and Beau Bingham to our discipline’s major annual conference to identify and encourage applications from candidates of diverse backgrounds. These efforts were successful because our final pool of 6 candidates was comprised of 5 women and two candidates from Asian-American backgrounds.
Many of COJO’s diversification activities have been achieved by Dr. Tracy Patton. Dr. Patton’s activities that have helped to increase diversity both in the department and at UW include:
•She is affiliated with and teaches coursework for both the African-American Studies (AAST) and the Women’s Studies Department.
•She teaches a Cultural Communication course that now has a “D” designation. This past fall, the class held a fund raiser for Rwanda.
•She continues to serve as a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Minority and Women’s Affairs.
•She served on the search committee for a Visiting Professor in the African-American Studies Program along with Director Gracie Lawson-Borders and Ken Smith.
•During Spring 2007, she represented UW as one of the professors in the London semester.
Dr. Patton was not alone in expanding her international background. Five other faculty were either engaged in such activities during the past year, or arranged to travel abroad for scholastic activities in the coming year: We believe this new emphasis on internationalization is important for two reasons. Not only does it expand the perspectives of our faculty, but it helps to realize the dictates of the Academic Plan, which states, “The challenges of internationalization. . . . .include the recruitment of an international faculty and student body and the inclusion of international perspectives in teaching, research, and service.”
•To a large degree, our international endeavors were initiated by Professor George Gladney who represented UW as a Fulbright Scholar in Poland during the 2005-06 academic year. Gladney returned to Poland this past May to teach a graduate course in Media Ecology at the Centre for Social Studies in Warsaw. While there, he lectured and trained journalists in 4 cities in the Ukraine for the U.S. State Department. Gladney also obtained the grant money to develop a new course in Global Media. The course will offer an optional Study Abroad component in which as many as 7 students can accompany him to Eastern Europe during the 2008 Summer Pre-session.
•Conrad Smith will represent UW as a Fulbright Scholar at Comenius University in the Czech Republic during the 2007-08 school year.
•During the summer of 2006, Matt Stannard traveled to Korea to help teach workshops on debate in Seoul.
•This coming August, Cindy Price will travel to Valmiera, Latvia to teach in the Baltic International Summer School program at Vidzeme University.
•In October, Gracie Lawson-Borders will travel to Oslo, Norway, to guest lecture and teach a management class for the Norwegian Institute of Journalism.
Graduate Director Mike Brown continues to add diversity to our graduate program:
•This past year we had graduate teaching assistants from Kenya and the Philippines (Rebecca Roberts cannot receive enough credit for her work with these students because she has seamlessly integrated them into teaching assistantships where they teach public speaking!).
•This past year, a student from China and another from Russia (who will receive an assistantship next year) were enrolled in our graduate program.
•In the coming year, another student from China will join our program on an assistantship, while another from Russia and two from Tibet will begin our program.
•Our graduate students from Kenya, Russia, and the Philippines will join 5 other students from our program to present papers at this summer’s Visual Communication Conference.
10. Assessment of Student Learning
1. Program Goals and Outcomes
A. Program Goals for Journalism:
The Journalism Program at the University of Wyoming is based on theory and practice and plans to train students who intend to practice responsible journalism in its many forms. In short, our graduates should be able to work as professional journalists and eventually assume positions of leadership in the profession. At the same time, they should be qualified for admission to top-flight graduate programs or be able to pursue other media-related careers if they choose.
B. Learning Outcomes for Journalism:
•Graduates should be able to compile information and write well, and understand the presentation of information in its many visual forms for mass audiences.
•Graduates should understand the theory applicable to the media and relevant to the student’s area of interest, be it verbal, visual, persuasive, etc.
•Graduates should understand the role and responsibilities of a free press, including a commitment to accuracy, fairness, depth, and social conscience.
C. Program Goals for Communication:
The Communication Program at the University of Wyoming is based on theory and practice and plans to provide students with a knowledge of the communication process in its many forms and an ability to apply this knowledge to an analysis of communication situations. Our graduates should be able to work as professional communicators and to serve as consultants of the communication process. Those who wish to pursue advanced degrees should be qualified for admission to top-flight graduate programs with a knowledge of the field that will allow them to serve as teaching and research assistants.
D. Learning Outcomes for Communication
•Graduates should have a broad understanding of the many theories applicable to the communication process and an in-depth understanding of those theories most applicable to one’s chose field.
•Graduates should have an understanding of and a demonstrated competence in both oral and written communication.
•Graduates should have an understanding of the components utilized in communication research and an ability to apply this knowledge to an analysis of communication situations.
E. Program Goals for the Graduate Program
The graduate program in the Communication and Journalism Department is designed to present students with an introduction to scholarship/research in the fields of communication and journalism, and to offer graduate assistants an opportunity to develop their teaching skills. We want our graduates to be competent scholars who are well-developed researchers and teachers. Should our graduates choose to pursue a professional career, we want them to know and understand the theoretical background of their area of expertise and to be able to apply this to improve the practice of their professional skills.
F. Learning Outcomes for the Graduate Program
•Graduate students should be expected to pursue a rigorous academic program that can reasonably be completed in two years.
•Graduates should be provided with the critical training and support to maximize their potential as teachers.
•Graduates should be provided with the background that allows them to understand and successfully complete rigorous academic research in their chosen area of emphasis.
•Graduates should have the credentials to successfully enter professional life in a variety of communication-related positions.
All of our program goals and outcomes can be found on our department website. Access to the website is the manner in which they are available to students.
2. Summary of Assessment Activities for 2006-07
•We are now in our fourth year of collecting data for the Journalism, Communication, and Minor programs. The plan specified that we use our internship program, which enrolled 92 students in 2006-07, as an informal capstone course. We reviewed the portfolios of all junior and senior interns, tabulated the numeric evaluation scores provided by their supervisors, and required them to submit a final paper detailing how well their college coursework prepared them for their careers. The Journalism Plan also specified that we survey the Wyoming Press Association to get feedback from its members to determine their satisfaction with the qualifications of our graduates.
•Data for the Journalism and Communication plans were taken from supervisor evaluations and were based on a scale of: 1=Unsatisfactory, 2=Satisfactory, 3=Very Good, 4= Excellent. The mean scores for our majors were:
Journalism Communication
Written/Oral Skills 3.75 3.69
Understanding of the Communication Process 4.0 3.67
Ability to Analyze and Provide Solutions. 3.63 3.47
We interpret these scores to indicate that the internship supervisors are very pleased with the coursework and preparation of our Journalism, Communication, and Minor students
•Feedback from junior- and senior-level interns and their supervisors validated the importance of our core curriculum. Of the courses that students found most valuable in the professional experience gained through their internships, 5 of the 7 are required courses including News Writing, Intro to Human Communication, Advanced Communication Theory, Public Speaking, and Communication Research. The two other courses cited as most valuable were Public Relations and Advertising, two courses that are required of students pursuing these fields. We were especially pleased with the value placed on Communication Research, since this is typically a course that students enter with a great degree of apprehension. The courses that students and their supervisors believe we need to offer were primarily advanced follow-up courses to those already on our curriculum including graphics, Web design, and writing. More coursework in computer instruction was also cited, but this is the mission of community colleges and outside of ours.
•The feedback from the newspaper industry related primarily to coursework that we began offering a year ago. We taught a course in Community Journalism during Spring 2006 that utilized a different member of the Wyoming press each week as the instructor. Beginning in Fall 2006, all entering Journalism majors were required to complete an internship as part of their Journalism degree. Industry representatives were pleased with the outcome of both these initiatives. They believed the course allowed students to apply their theoretical background to real problems in the industry, and they believed practical experience is a must for budding journalists. They also indicated that they were very pleased with the new Journalism degree offered at UW/CC.
•The Graduate Program Assessment Plan was completed this year. An overview of our first-year assessment activities include:
A. Using the Office of Institutional Analysis we created a master spreadsheet of data for graduate students enrolled from 1996-2006. This was done to get a baseline of information about GRE scores, GPA (grad and undergrad), date of graduation, and time to graduation. This allows us to identify trends, strengths and weaknesses. We have added information to the spread sheet that includes conference presentations and post-graduation careers.
•One of the weaknesses identified for our “measures of scholarly success” included a time-to-graduation of about five semesters rather than four, and most students complete their coursework but do not complete the thesis in the one semester allotted for that purpose. Our initial plan to address this weakness includes adding a specific calendar of dates distributed to graduate students during fall orientation that identify benchmarks of thesis progress such as the date when chairs and committee members should be chosen, when the prospectus meeting should be held, the latest date that final copies should be sent to committee members, and the latest date for scheduling the defense. Reminders are then sent as each semester progresses.
•The data show that of the 90 students in our program in the past 10 years, 22 were active students in 2006, and of the remaining 68, 53 graduated (78%). Twenty-two students have presented papers at major national conferences, and 5 have received Ellbogen Teaching Awards. The average GPA for our graduate students is 3.77 and 10 completed the program with GPAs of 4.0.
•Although we are satisfied with our “measures of teaching effectiveness,” we have made an optional one-hour teaching practicum required for all graduate assistants. This is in addition to attending Ellbogen Teaching Center activities. We also continue to have weekly meetings with GAs, and formalized the teaching supervision of the COJO 2100 assistant.
B. Tracking post-graduation careers continues to be a challenge, particularly as former students change jobs and become more removed from the program over time. This will likely be an ongoing challenge. We also plan to revise our outcome assessments as they are implemented and weaknesses become evident. We found the Office of Institutional Analysis to be a good resource for establishing our initial data set, and perhaps they could add this function as a regular part of the assessment process. Since we are a small enough department, we stay in contact with many graduates, or use additional network contacts to track this data. At this point we are missing data for only 20 of our 90 past students. We feel this gives us a good idea of post-graduate success, and will continue to use our network contacts to locate and track post-graduation careers.
4. Feedback from last year:
Feedback from last year indicated that COJO had shown excellent assessment work, but agreed that our graduate program assessment is our biggest weakness. We have now completed our first year of collecting data, so we need to continually monitor graduate student assessment since it is a work in progress. The report also indicated that assessing through our internship program may have run its course. However, we have not yet been able to identify another source of data that is as rich, and our efforts this year are aimed toward evaluating our new graduate program assessment.
5. Problems, challenges, issues:
At this juncture in the
development of our graduate program assessment, we can use some feedback to help
us evaluate the quality of the data that we will collect.