PAGE 3 ACADEMICS
GSW LAUNCHES NEW B.A. PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND EMERGING MEDIA Talik Hill Staff Writer Dr. Jones is an assistant professor of communication and emerging media here at GSW. In this interview, she discusses the process of implementing a new verison of the communication program. What skills can students expect to attain from this program? “With this program, we have several types of concentrations. So it’s going to really depend on what the student thinks would fit with their future career goals. So for example, we have a Health Communication concentration and that’s really geared toward folks of the nursing program like being able to put together presentations on research that they’ve done and being able to professionally talk to families and those kinds of things. We have a Media Studies concentration, which is focused on understanding the theoretical aspects of consuming & creating media, and being exposed to different kinds of media. We also have a Strategic Communication concentration that’s focused on things like public relations campaigns, being able to actually do the things that are required of public relations professionals, like social media posts, and creating a campaign from start to finish. We have a Rhetorical Criticism concentration, that looks at things like language development, etc., and how those work in political and civic spheres, which is great for folks in political science and history majors and things like that. So we are incredibly interdisciplinary, and we’re designed to be that way to complement the programs that are already here on GSW’s campus, as well as to give them real-life experience & skills for when they graduate and go out to start working with companies and businesses in southwest Georgia.”
Picture by Talik Hill.
Video by Talik Hill
What are the digital media lab & the communication research library about and how do they help to prepare students for the workforce?
pus right now go through Judy Orton Grissett, in experiential learning, but those can count toward communication internships as well. We’re still building up relationships right now but we obviously have the stu“So our digital media lab is a lab dent newspaper housed under this in Collum Hall that is set up with a department, Communication and brand new iMacs that have the Ado- Emerging Media, and we’re hoping be creative products on them, as well to build up more relationships with as different products that will allow some of the gaming organizations, for things like podcasting, general the esports team. We have also been audio editing, video editing, graphic in talks with the athletics department design, you could also put together to see if we can get students doing publications with some of these pro- internships with the new video board grams as well as general research. It’s that got set up in the fall. If you have designed for students to be able to an interest, we will find a way.” have an all-in-one space where they can do creative projects, like editing, What careers can students expect layering, 3D graphic designs, and to be able to market themselves that way they can have a central hub for? for that. The library is a media-based research space, with sources that “The sky is the limit. That’s the inwe’ve pulled together so that stuterdisciplinary benefit of communidents have access to these books cation and emerging media. We are without having to leave this space highlighting that. With the local busiof the program. The lab is open to nesses, we’re looking for folks to do anyone but permission is required to public relations type of work, copygain access to cameras, podcasting, writing, content creation, being able and audio recording equipment.” to do things like publishing assistance, journalism, sports commentaWhat on-campus extracurricular tor, critical analyst, those are all jobs activities, jobs, or clubs correspond you could get with a Communication with this degree? and Emerging Media bachelors.” “We do have internship opportunities, most of our internships on cam-
Picture by Talik Hill.
Picture by Patrick Peacock.
