Division News
Communication & Journalism 2009 Annual Report
As one of the largest departments at UW both in terms of number of majors and number of credit hours offered, one might think that the Department of Communication and Journalism (COJO) should be content merely to meet student needs and University demands. Yet as in the past years, the department has refused to rest on its laurels and has forged ahead with new initiatives.
The new initiatives this year focused on reinvigorating our graduate program and in implementing new budget strategies in the face of declining state revenues that would allow us to benefit our students and to keep moving ahead in coming years. In our graduate program, we attempted to upgrade its academic standing by spreading a wider recruiting net (see #6.C. Graduate Recruitment) and by challenging our students to present more papers at conferences (see #4. Research). With budget initiatives, we shifted some scholarship money to summer session to encourage students to take courses then (see #6.B. Undergraduate Retention). We are attempting to cover for lost part-time money by encouraging those instructors to offer their classes online through Outreach (see #2. Academic Planning Implementation—COJO 9). To account for reduced revenue, the Debate Team plans to restructure its competitive schedule (see #2. Academic Planning Implementation—COJO 3). These changes are in line with the University's budget planning process that aims to "prioritize our expenditures to accomplish our mission."
Any savings or new revenues we can generate are important to this mission so that we can continue to provide programs crucial to the University. Among these are:
•The UW Debate Team, the most successful intercollegiate competitor at UW, which is housed in our department. This year's successes include an appearance in the Sweet 16, and a national ranking of 19th..
•Our department also houses the Oral Communication Center, a resource whose student numbers continue to increase, and one that is drawing national attention.
•We play a key role in the nationally-acclaimed Synergy program for at-risk students. •And we provide the Public Speaking courses that most of UW's students use to fill their Oral Communication ((O) requirement.
Despite forging ahead in new directions while maintaining excellence in existing programs, department members continued to post a record of achievement. Some major accomplishments this year include:
•Five faculty and two graduate student teaching awards
•A finalist for the Spitaleri Award, an A&S Outstanding Graduate, and 2 Phi Beta Kappas
•Appearances on PBS' Wyoming Signatures by 2 faculty members
•Department members organized one regional conference and another national conference
•Continued emphasis on internationalization with three faculty members engaging in academic activities in Eastern Europe and another in Korea.
•Served as co-host for a visit by MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews
•Research productivity also remained high, and for the sixth year in a row the number of accepted refereed works among our faculty exceeded expectations, this year by 160%.
As the rest of this document will detail, the department maintained its record of excellence in teaching, research, advising and service in 2008-09. The faculty of COJO is proud that the department is growing and thriving, and that it has continued to make strides in new directions during the past year.
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 1,271 students this past year, up from 1,225 students a year ago and from 559 students five years ago.
•The Center's Director, Beau Bingham, continued to develop a system in which he trains and staffs the Center with students who receive internship credit for their work. The department sent Prof. Bingham and 8 of these students to the National Association of Communication Centers Conference in Philadelphia.
•An online tutoring option has been added to the center to expand the availability of its current services.
•The Oral Communication Center Advisory Committee 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.
COJO 2: If necessary, implement additional sections of Public Speaking in the coming year to meet this demand.
•We applied for and received an additional GA from the Graduate School to teach Public Speaking. This will allow us to offer 4 additional sections per year for at least two years.
•We reserved special sections of Public Speaking for Synergy (6 sections), Figs (1 section), and SureStart (1 section).
•We offered a special section of Public Speaking for severely apprehensive speakers.
•Following a sabbatical, Rebecca Roberts developed a new Public Speaking course whose content is specific to different departments.
COJO 3:Determine andmaintain a budget for the UW Debate Team so that it remains nationally competitive.
•Funding for the debate team remained stable this year, and the team enjoyed the continued success that has now become an annual occurrence.
•In anticipation of reduced funding for next year, a significant realignment of the team's structure was implemented that will allow it to compete as successfully as in the past but with reduced expenditures. This change involves dropping Parliamentary Debate and focusing on CETA. No change in the number of team members should result.
•After the Debate team overspent its budget by a significant amount three years ago, a budget process was implemented by the Department Head and Dean's Office. Not only has the team lived within the budget for a third year, it once again repaid $12,000 of the debt from 3 years ago, which was twice the amount of repayment that was projected.
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 major development effort for this year was the implementation of the Debate Team Hall of Fame (see COJO 5). We will continue our efforts to publicize the debate team's success and attempt to use this success as a springboard for additional development.
COJO 5: Establish a Debate Hall of Fame to honor past UW debaters and supporters.
•The first induction ceremony was held in April with five members inducted. They include Greg Dyekman, Wayne Callaway, Al Louden, Michael Owens, and Doug Reeves.
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.
•A meeting took place between members of CWC in Riverton and UW faculty to explore the possibility of a joint program that would allow students to complete a 4-year degree in broadcasting at CWC. This item is now part of the new COJO and A&S Academic Plans.
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.
• Due to the number of new, and in some cases unanticipated, programs in which both departments have been involved in the last 5 years, no action will be taken on this Action Item.
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.
•The department worked with the Dean's Office and benefactors to implement the new Larsh Bristol Photojournalism Fellowship. The first fellow studied an antelope migration in western Wyoming. His work was so successful, it has been picked up by National Geographic.
•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.
•We are now in the process of implementing new online courses. To date, two courses have already been placed online and offered through Outreach. Two part-time instructors have been encouraged to place their courses online (Business & Professional Communication and Graphics of Communication) so that they will still be offered despite cuts in the part-time budget. Another faculty member is exploring the possibility of adapting Mass Media Law to an online format.
3. Teaching
COJO continues to play an essential role in teaching at UW:
•Our 10,400 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.
•For a third year, we taught 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 applied for the grant money to take them to a communication center conference in Philadelphia.
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 Beau Bingham, 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 Beau Bingham 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 2008-09 was a highly respectable 4.01.
•One of our graduate assistants, Mitzi Hettgar, was named the winner of an Ellbogen Student Teacher Award.
•Mitzi also won the Outstanding Graduate Assistant Teaching Award from the Rocky Mountain Communication Association.
Examples of the quality of instruction offered by members of the department faculty during the past Academic Year include:
• 88% of the courses taught by our faculty received student evaluations higher than 4.0 on a 5-point scale. Three faculty, including Mike Brown, Beau Bingham, and Cindy Price did not receive a student evaluation lower than 4.5 during the year. Overall, 77% of our faculty members did not receive an evaluation lower than 4.0, while 100% of our faculty members had average evaluations of 4.0 or higher.
•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. Cindy Price was named a Top 10 Teacher in the A&S College. Justin Steward was presented the PIE (Promoting Intellectual Engagement) Award from LeaRN. Gracie Lawson-Borders won an ASUW Thumbs Up Award. Tracey Patton and Ken Smith were both cited as Outstanding Teachers by A&S Outstanding Graduates.
•Indicative of the excellence in instruction in our department is the Forensics team, which is an outward representation of UW's commitment to oral communication education. To follow past success, highlights this year include a final ranking of 19th nationally (out of 120 schools) with an appearance in the Sweet 16. UW was top-ranked team in the region and won three tournaments this year during the regular season.
This success was unfathomable a decade ago when UW had only 6 competitive debaters on the team. While the team has remained UW's top intercollegiate competitor, it cannot be emphasized enough that this success is in the academic realm, which speaks volumes about the quality of education at UW
During 2008-09, COJO followed the Teaching Peer Review Guidelines that the department implemented in 2004-05.
Articulation: Six faculty members including Beau Bingham, Mike Brown, Carol Tarantola, Ken Smith, Justin Stewart, and Matt Stannard attended the annual Articulation Conference of Communication scholars hosted by Casper College in September. Nineteen faculty from four community colleges and the University were present at the meeting. The primary topics of discussion were coordination of debate activities and strategies for Oral Communication Labs.
4. Research
While COJO is not normally viewed as a research-intensive department, for the sixth 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 10 faculty with research expectations produced 16 refereed publications. Faculty who exceeded expectations included Eileen Gilchrist, Sandy Hsu, and Tracey Patton.
As part of a new emphasis in our graduate program, all students are required to present a paper at a conference prior to graduation. The response was evident this year as 14 students presented papers at the UW Graduate Symposium, 5 graduate students presented papers at the Visual Communication Conference, 2 presented papers at the Western States Communication Conference, 8 presented papers at the National Pop Culture Conference, and 10 presented papers at the Rocky Mountain Communication Association Conference.
Kristen Owen received an honorable mention award for the top graduate paper, and Kellie Nelson received the award for the top undergraduate paper at the Rocky Mountain Communication Association Conference.
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 their perceptions of UW can depend on their feelings about 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, Reach magazine and the Owen Wister Review). Our activities involving these groups this past year include:
•Cindy Price presented an advertising workshop at the Wyoming Press Association Annual Convention.
•Ken Smith served on the Wyoming Press Association Board of Directors.
•Our department is now in its fifth 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.
•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 continues its involvement with Student Publications. George Gladney served on its board of directors. The editors of two of the four student publications—Hanna Bush at The Branding Iron, and Lindsey Korsick at new Reach 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:
•The Department co-hosted the visit of MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews to the UW campus.
•Tracey Patton and George Gladney both appeared on the PBS show Wyoming Signatures. Patton discussed the orphanage project in Africa sponsored by her Cross-Cultural Communication class, and Gladney discussed his class' Study Abroad trip to eastern Europe.
•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 fifth year on the air in Laramie.
•Cindy Price had her P.R. classes performing service for departments, agencies, and businesses throughout the University and the Laramie community. This year, the classes worked with UW Saferide, Wyoming Humanities Council, KUWR, UW Acres, and Freedom has a Birthday.
•Matt Stannard continued to increase the visibility of oral communication at UW. He hosted high school and college workshops in the Summer of 2008 that brought nearly 100 students and coaches from 9 states to UW. The Top of the Rockies tournaments, hosted by UW in the fall, remains the largest first-semester parliamentary debate tournament in the nation.
•Tracey Patton served as chair of the President's Advisory Council for Minority and Women's Affairs.
•Gracie Lawson-Borders served as Director of UW's African American Studies Program.
•Carol Tarantola served as Assistant for Development to the Dean at UW/CC.
In addition to traditional service to academic organizations such as manuscript review, other noteworthy service included:
•Beau Bingham serves on the LeaRN board of directors.
•Mike Brown serves as Editor of the Journal of Radio Studies.
•The Department organized the Rocky Mountain Communication Association Conference in Laramie in April.
•The Department will host the 23rd Annual Visual Communication Association Conference that will take place in Jackson in June.
•George Gladney serves on the editorial boards of two journals, Mass Communication and Society and Newspaper Research Journal.
•Sandy Hsu serves as Head of the Communication Apprehension and Avoidance Division of the National Communication Association.
•Gracie Lawson-Borders serves as the Vice Chair for the Media Management & Economics Division of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication.
•Tracey Patton serves as an editorial board member for the National Women's Studies Association Journal.
•Matt Stannard was invited to teach at the Asian Debate Institute in Seoul, South Korea, in the Summer of 2008.
•Matt Stannard served on the Editorial Board of the National Parliamentary Debate Association Journal. He was also the District 9 Chair for the National Debate Tournament and the Rocky Mountain Regional Chair for the Cross-Examination Debate Association.
•Ken Smith served 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 then grew over a two-year period and stabilized again at 367 majors, 2nd largest in the A&S College.
•The increases were due to a jump in both Communication and Journalism majors. The number of Communication majors has increased from 194 to 245. The number of Journalism majors has increased over 30% in the past 7 years to 125.
•After an initial jump in the number of student credit hours 4 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 10,400 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 2008.
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 3 years ago. We lost the ability to track demand through waiting lists due to the new WyoWeb system. During registration for Spring 2009, the class filled by the middle of freshman registration. For Fall 2009, the class filled before most incoming freshman were able to register. We are trying to offer additional sections of Public Speaking in the summer to offset impact during the regular year. In the past, the summer sections did not fill. However, this summer 11 sections are full, so hopefully this will help to offset the impact during the regular school year.
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:
•Debate workshops for high school and college students in Summer 2008 brought over 100 students and coaches from 9 states to campus.
•Eric Wiltse 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 Eileen Gilchrist, Rebecca Roberts, and George Gladney. 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 16 students, and $27,000 in regular scholarships to 30 students in our department.
•The department added $10,000 in summer scholarships this year. Since the Hathaway Program does not fund summer tuition, we used this money to encourage summer enrollments. Since summer money benefits both the department and the Dean's Office, we hope this new program will benefit the students, the Dean, and the department by bringing in additional revenues.
•Under the direction of the Student Affairs Committee, the department's honorary, Lambda Pi Eta, is now in its sixth year. The chapter had 17 members this year and organized 4 different events.
•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 89 students register for 276 internship credits this past year and internships accounted for 109 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 recruitment efforts for our graduate program have become more rigorous this academic year. We revamped the graduate page of our departmental website, which looks more modern and attractive (see: http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/COJO/newgrad.asp)
•In the process of our updating, we created a MySpace website page, in order to attract students as well. This webpage costs no money and links to the departmental website. Some students who applied to our graduate program learned about us from our MySpace page: ( http://www.myspace.com/uwgraduatecommstudies).
•Also, in the process of updating our graduate page website, we created a departmental "brand." Our brand, "new thinking, new media, new life" in addition to our new logo: "stand out from the crowd" was put on all of our graduate recruitment "swag;" e.g., brochures, pens, magnets, stickers, and table skirt.
•As we continue our recruitment efforts, Tracey Patton (Director of Graduate Studies) and her assistant have a list of all of the Communication and Journalism departments in the nation. With a concentration on terminal BA departments, all of the recruiting materials listed above will be sent to these programs in an effort to recruit their promising BA-students.
•Our primary activities for graduate recruitment are at academic conferences, at debate tournaments, and in the UW Union in conjunction with International Programs continue.
•With regard to international graduate recruitment, we continue to have a large interest from students in China, Kenya, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Russia. We had new interest from students in Libya and Nepal. International students who accepted our invitation to complete their graduate studies with us are from Japan and Korea.
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 about $10,000 over a 4-year span to peak at $30,479 in 2006. Revenues in 2007 were $28,041. In 2008, COJO generated more summer income than any other A&S department at $43,046.
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, which is housed in the department offices. The sixth class of inductees will be added at the Press Association's annual summer convention this June.
•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.
•The highly visible success of our debate team has opened the door to new development possibilities. In addition to regular solicitations, we hope to capitalize on the team's success and with the very positive reception accorded the new Debate Hall of Fame.
•Continued development efforts with donor Gloria Berg came to fruition, and this spring we offered the third Ralph Berg Memorial Scholarship totaling $300.
•Dale Walker and Ken Smith continued to develop the Larsh Bristol Memorial Photojournalism Fellowship. The first recipient, who documented the Pronghorn migration from the Grand Tetons to the Red Desert, was so successful that his project attracted the interest of National Geographic. His work was also presented at the Board of Visitors meeting. The second recipient, who will document Pine Beetle devastation in the Medicine Bow Forest, has a gallery show scheduled in the Union during Homecoming.
•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 2009 issue included a story about new summer scholarships being offered this year. Another story featured Olivia Engkvist, a former Spitaleri Award finalist and recent alum who is active in fund-raising for community non-profit groups in Wyoming.
•We make a point to include stories in our newsletter than discuss how gifts are being used for the benefit of students. We also include a special form for giving.
•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, as well as articles about outstanding achievements by students, faculty, and alumni.
•For public relations, information about the department's scholarships 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. Currently, the Web site is being redesigned by a student intern to conform to the latest UW standards and will be unveiled this summer. The department has a Web Site Committee that provides ideas for enhancing the web site.
8. Classified and Professional Staffing
Some problems resulted with professional staff this year. In one instance, an office associate ran into a conflict with the Director of Graduate Studies. Following an intervention, both resolved their differences to the point where they have redeveloped a strong working relationship. In another instance, an office associate fell behind in resolving P cards. When the situation became known, it appeared as if the delays resulted from the assistant dealing with continual student distractions. The implementation of time management procedures will hopefully cure the problem.
One COJO staff member, Makayla Stewart, won the Unsung Staff Hero award.
Staff does not handle Web maintenance, advising, or other duties associated with faculty.
9. Diversity
In terms of diversification, COJO now offers one of the most diverse faculties at UW. Whereas six years ago our faculty was 100% Caucasian and 31% female, it is now 77% Caucasian and 43% female, including one faculty member who is Asian and two who are African-American.
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 has a "D" designation. She also teaches African American Rhetoric (AAST/COJO 4160-5160) which is cross-listed between COJO and AAST and now has both a "D" and "CH" designation. This past fall, the Cross Cultural Communication course put textbook theories and ideas into practice when they once again worked with the Shalom Garden Orphanage in Kenya (children in this orphanage were orphaned due to AIDS/HIV pandemic). This was the second year the course worked with this group, which received state-wide media coverage. In Fall 2007 the course worked to address issues regarding essential needs. In Fall 2008 the class worked on issues of education. In Fall 2006 this class worked with genocide survivors in Rwanda.
•She is the Chair of the President's Advisory Council on Minority and Women's Affairs where she oversees an annual budget of $75,000.
•She is an Advisory Board Member of the Social Justice Research Center.
•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.
Dr. Patton was not alone in expanding her international background. Four other faculty were engaged in international activities during the past 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."
• Professor George Gladney continued to build on the program he initiated as a Fulbright Scholar in Poland during the 2005-06 academic year. After teaching a course in Global Media that offered an optional Study Abroad component, 4 students accompanied him to Eastern Europe during the 2008 Summer Pre-session.
•In May 2009, Gladney was invited to lecture on the limits and purposes of free speech in Moldava and Romania
•Conrad Smith followed up on his Fulbright Scholarship during the 2007-08 school year by returning to Eastern Europe in May 2009 where he presented a workshop for 14 Ukrainian journalists, lectured to 500 journalism students and professors in Kiev, and collaborated with George Gladney on a 2-hour presentation for 24 Romanian journalists.
•During the summer of 2008, Matt Stannard traveled to Korea to help teach workshops on debate in Seoul.
•Cindy Price used a sabbatical during Fall 2008 to work with students and conduct research at the Media Management and Transformation Centre in Jonkoping, Sweden and at the Media Management Center at Northwestern University.
Our graduate program continues to display diversity:
•This past year we had graduate teaching assistants from Romania, Japan, and the Philippines.
•Additional students from Japan and Korea have enrolled in our graduate program.
•Our graduate students from Romania and Japan joined other students from our program to present papers at both the UW Graduate Symposium and the Popular Culture Conference.
10. Assessment of Student Learning
A. Undergraduate Assessment
The Learning Outcomes for both the Communication and the Journalism assessment programs have been updated. The Web links for the two sites are as follows:
Communication: http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/cojo/Assessment-Comm.htm
Journalism: http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/cojo/Assessment-Journ.htm
•Our programs' main accomplishments pertain to both Communication and to Journalism majors and minors. Last year reviewers of our assessment activity commented that we had appropriate indirect measures of collecting data, but that we needed more direct methods. In response we implemented two direct measures. We use our internship program, which enrolled 54 juniors and seniors last year as our capstone course. All interns are required to submit a portfolio at the end of the semester. This year, the internship director began assigning a numerical grade to each portfolio. In addition, all junior and senior interns were required to complete an exit interview in which they were asked to cite the courses that they found most valuable to their work and to name any coursework missing from our curriculum that might have been valuable.
•Data Analysis
1. Formal Evaluation
a. Portfolio grades assigned by the Internship Director (based on a normal grading curve of 70-79 = Satisfactory, 80-89 = Very Good, 90-100 = Excellent).
Journalism Communication
90.3 89.2
b. Feedback provided by exit interviews: Communication students cited 18 courses in our curriculum as having played a valuable role in preparing them for their internship. The three most frequently cited courses in order of citation were Business & Professional Communication, Public Relations, and News Writing & Reporting. Journalism students cited 14 courses. The three cited most frequently were News Writing & Reporting, Online Journalism, and Investigative Reporting. Courses that students believe should be added to the curriculum include sales, broadcasting, and writing (especially specific writing such as sports and entertainment).
2. External evaluation: 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 3.43 3.48
Understanding of the Communication Process 3.5 3.74
Ability to Analyze and Provide Solutions. 3.43 3.52
3. Informal Evaluation: Tracking the progress of our some of our visible graduates indicates that they are very well prepared to handle the rigors or their careers. Some of our graduates who made the news this year include:
Hanna Bush was editor of the Branding Iron and a finalist for the Spitaleri Award that honors UW's top female graduate.
Lara Azar is the press secretary for California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger.
Sharon Linhardt is owner of one of the top PR firms in Denver and recently established a new endowment for photojournalism students at UW.
Chris Boswell is the Chief of Staff for Governor Dave Freudenthal.
Dan Haley is the editorial page editor for the Denver Post and president of the UW Alumni Association.
4. External Constituencies: Members of the Wyoming Press Association said that they are pleased with the preparation of our graduates. They were also very pleased that we have implemented the 4-year degree program at UW/CC and that students are now beginning to graduate from that program. The WPA members said they would like to see us add a sales course to our curriculum to prepare graduates for careers in media sales.
•In the past, we have made a number of changes based on the information provided by our assessment activities. We added a new class in community journalism that we teach on an every-other-year basis. We added an internship as a requirement for Journalism majors. We changed the content of our photo course from black-and-white to color. This year data from two separate sources appears to stand out. Both the students and external constituencies indicated that they would like to see us implement coursework that would prepare our students for careers in sales. We have a professor with expertise in this area, but he teaches required high-demand courses that did not leave room for a sales course. Due to the assessment results, we have arranged for another professor to team teach the course for one semester to free this individual up to teach a course in sales in the future.
B. Graduate Assessment
We are now in the second year of collecting feedback under the revised plan for our Graduate Program. The Learning Outcomes for the Graduate Program have been updated. The Web link is as follows:
http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/cojo/Assessment%20-%20Grad.htm
•The program's main accomplishments fall under the areas of Academic Competence and Teaching Competence.
1. Academic competence: A change has been made in our graduate program to make our students more competitive in the academic arena. For the first time, we have required that students present at least at one academic conference during their tenure as an MA student in our department. This new requirement affects students who were admitted into our graduate program during the Fall 2008 semester or later. This year, 14 students presented papers at the UW Graduate Symposium, 5 graduate students presented papers at the Visual Communication Conference, 2 presented papers at the Western States Communication Conference, 8 presented papers at the National Pop Culture Conference, and 10 presented papers at the Rocky Mountain Communication Association Conference.
Ten students completed their degrees between 2008-2009 academic year:
2009: Kristin Lewis Green, Sheila Ilagan
2008: John Foy, Laura Frisell, Anne Funk, Donna Cheme Lorenz, Sally Schedlock, Crystal Stratton, Alexandra Sukhomlinova , Diana Wagner
To better ameliorate a weakness in our graduate program (the number of students who fail to complete the degree in the regular four semesters), all graduate students are now given a timeline of deadlines, dates, and receive frequent electronic updates from the Director of Graduate Studies about what is due when and where they should be in the course of their studies.
Post Graduation Success: Of the ten students who graduated, eight are in private industry (e.g., newspaper, communications, business) and two work in the education field (one at The University of Wyoming and the other at LCCC). Additional education opportunities and employment in educational institutions continue to provide important professional opportunities for our students.
2. Teaching Competence: The average student course evaluation for all graduate assistants during 2008-09 was a highly respectable 4.01. One of our graduate assistants, Mitzi Hettgar, was named the winner of both an Ellbogen Student Teacher Award and the Outstanding Graduate Assistant Teaching Award from the Rocky Mountain Communication Association.
•What data were collected and analyzed: COJO uses two primary means of tracking our students.
1. For former students who pursue academic careers, we track their careers through the active participation of our faculty in academic conferences. Many of our Masters students go on to careers at Wyoming community colleges, so we are able to keep posted on their careers through the annual Articulation Conference.
2. Our Director of Graduate Studies maintains a spreadsheet that tracks where our graduate students go upon graduation. Whenever she comes across students without career listings, she makes a point to actively seek information on their status.
•Progress and changes based on past assessment: With regard to the assessment of our graduate program, we have detailed changes that we have made to the program throughout this document relating to our more active recruiting efforts and graduate students' success in presenting papers. The changes made were due to items noted in last year's annual report. We continue to learn from the changes we instituted this academic year and what we will do for the next academic year. Our greatest challenge is recruiting (Wyoming is not seen by many as an ideal locale for a graduate education) and getting applicants to apply from all over the country, rather than from the surrounding Rocky Mountain region or from our own undergraduate students. We seem to be better at recruiting from East Asian countries (e.g., China, Korea, and Japan) than in the U.S.
Posted on Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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Communication
and Journalism
Dr. Kenneth Smith, Department chair
Ross Hall Room 428
Dept. 3904
1000 E. University Ave.
Laramie, WY 82071
(307) 766-3122
Fax: (307) 766-5293
Email: klsmith@uwyo.edu
