Journalists carry a heavy load these days. With the constant competition of Twitter, Facebook, and any other social media website, journalists are forced to develop more skills as each year passes.
In order to authenticate these skills, Southeast Community College offers an array of classes pertaining to a Journalism major. Particularly, there are two classes, Public Relations and Photojournalism, that are not offered every quarter, but will be offered for the spring quarter.
Public Relations is one of those classes; a semi-quarterly course, it was offered last fall.
In the Public Relations class, students first go through the steps of developing a public relations plan and learn how the communication process works; at the end of the course, they combine everything they have learned into one final project.
The final project requires the student to go out and select an organization they are either familiar with or would like to see develop. They then come up with a public relations plan for this particular business.
Professor Jay Stalder teaches this course.
“The whole course informs you on what public relations is, how you can use it, how it can be beneficial says Stalder, “and we tie that together with a project that allows you to tie all of those elements together into a working public relations plan that can be successful in the environment in which you choose.”
The public relations plan involves building a model of what public relations is, how to communicate with various groups of people and then implementing that plan to see the results.
Photojournalism is an additional class for which students can register this approaching spring quarter.
Joshua Whitney teaches the course and calls it a “specialty course.”
He also says that while the pre-requisite for Photojournalism is Digital Photography, he often signs wavers for students if he feels that they have at least a “passing familiarity with digital photography.”
Whitney believes in keeping pre-requisites to a minimum so that students feel invited to take these specialty courses and find out whether or not they are interested in the area.
This particular class includes multiple assignments that deal with the SCC Challenge, the student news site. The assignments include creating a photo page, taking featured photos or portrait photos, and lastly, a slide show.
One past student, Talal Raza, created his slideshow revolving around the Ag Olympics. To see this example, one can easily visit www.sccchallenge.com, and scroll down through the blue headings of each section, until reaching the one titled, “Video.” His video is called “SCC Ag Olympics 2011.”
Ultimately, the professors here at Southeast Community College desire to help students determine where they want to take their careers.
“College is a place that rightly encourages students to experiment with different things…to have that opportunity to see what a person likes or doesn’t like,” says Whitney.