The Fall ’23 semester is well underway, and the JMC department is busy! Having just accomplished our ACEJMC re-accreditation, we now return to the “re-imagining JMC” initiative that started pre-pandemic. Actually, it’s now less about imagining and more about implementation. So, there are a few changes coming about.
The most noticeable change is with student media. Professor Leigh Wright is now serving as advisor to student media that is now multimedia and “digital first,” with specialized print editions. Student media is looking good, and I anticipate it will become a primary recruitment tool for JMC.
There are a couple of new faces in the department. Misty Harris is our new administrative assistant. Maranda Goke comes to us from Penn State where she is now defending her dissertation. And Ed Rode is returning for his second year with us as we continue to lean into visual storytelling.
And then there are the big changes that are underway as we revise our curriculum. Much of our coursework entered the MSU catalogue as far back as the seventies and eighties. And although we have updated some courses and added others, a comprehensive review is warranted. Consider our television major. Although some of our graduates with this degree work in television, most of them don’t. They work in media production or, in modern parlance, “content creation.” And there are many more examples throughout our curriculum. Some changes are simply updates in nomenclature. Others are more structural as we respond to changes in the marketplace.
Yet with these changes, our mission remains the same: To equip students with the necessary philosophical and ethical frameworks; the requisite technical skills in writing and media production; and the ability as life-long learners to interpret, create and communicate global and local events in a diverse, equitable, and inclusive manner that advances the interests of all stakeholders in media, commerce and society, while advocating for democratic principles.
And that means we are life-long learners, too.
