by Rachel Adams
The School of Journalism and Mass Communications continues to expand its opportunities for international journalism studies by sending students out as well as bringing them in. This academic year, some faculty members prepared for class trips overseas and European scholars visited the J-school.
For the last few years, a Maymester class has traveled to Germany with Associate Professor Richard Moore and Scott Farrand, a visual communications instructor. Their students got the chance to earn course credit while crossing international borders. The two-week trip showed students how to communicate across conventional media boundaries by using print and electronic media.
Now with the help of Dean Charles Bierbauer, Moore and Dr. Gordon Smith, director of the Walker Institute, more SJMC students will have the opportunity to study international journalism over both 2010 summer sessions with the new Media and the Fall of Communism course. It includes a three-week trip to eastern Europe and will trace events from the 1950s through the 1990s in terms of efforts to overthrow Communism. There will be a strong focus on the Hungarian uprising, the rise of Solidarity in Poland and the tumbling of the Berlin Wall.
“I think it will be intriguing for students to see places they’ve only heard about, read about and seen video clips about,” said Dean Bierbauer. This class is not a production class like the Munich class; he described the class as “more of an understanding class with a blend of media and political science.”
Moore was inspired for the new class by his trips to Germany during the 2008 and 2009 Maymester sessions. “I told him he couldn’t do it unless I got to go travel with him,” joked Dean Bierbauer. The dean worked as a broadcast correspondent in eastern Europe during the time that many of these events occurred. He saw firsthand the role the media played during the Cold War, and the eventual downfall of communism. He hopes this course will teach the understanding of the active and informative role that media can play in covering events.
Farrand will continue the Munich trip, and this year, Assistant Professor Denise McGill will co-teach the class.
Associate Professor Van Kornegay will spend the 2010 spring semester teaching in Italy with the Consortium of Universities for International Study. And Dr. Keith Kenney is again teaching Community, Culture and Communication, a semester class that travels to Jamaica over spring break. Students will fully immersed in the daily life of a small rural Jamaican village while doing service work and creating a video in the Beyond the Classroom series.
The J-school also hopes to attract more students from other countries to study here at USC.
In November, Dr. Kenney coordinated a visit from Paul Bailey of Teesside University in England. While USC and Teesside have developed a partnership, Bailey’s visit was aimed at strengthening ties with the J-school itself. Dr. Kenney said he hopes to increase the number of student and faculty exchanges between our School and Teesside.
Veronika Lefrancois, from IEJ (Institut Européen de Journalisme) in Paris, visited Columbia in early September to promote an exchange program being developed between SJMC and IEJ in Paris. Students who participate in the exchange will be able to study in Paris for one or two semesters while students from Paris will come to study in Columbia. “We believe it will be beneficial for both parts,” said Lefrancois.
As the opportunities for international studies continue to expand, the SJMC hopes to increase the availability of foreign travels, both outward and inward.
No comments:
Post a Comment