unljnews

by GARY KEBBEL

Dean Gary Kebbel

With my first semester as dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications behind me, now is a good time to tell you about what we have been doing, and to seek your advice about what we should do next.

Our most important news is that our national accrediting team recommended full re-accreditation, which is good for the next six years. They wrote a really strong report that praises the faculty’s work:

“Nebraska is a national leader in journalism and mass communications education,” the team said in its report.

The accrediting team also cited the college for having an innovative curriculum:

“The breadth of course offerings and the almost breathless rate of change at the college means Nebraska journalism and advertising/public relations students will be challenged, have significant multimedia experience, and have every opportunity to be prepared for the constantly changing world of news media and communications.”

During the fall of 2010, I visited alumni in Omaha, Chicago, Minneapolis and New York. I learned of their loyalty and gratitude to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and to the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. I learned that alumni like being able to help the college in whatever way they can. So I’m asking now for your advice.

Please help me think about what the college should teach to journalism, advertising and public relations students. What was missing when you started your first job? What are your young hires missing now? What can UNL do to fill those gaps and make sure our students are the best prepared to do a great job from Day One?

If you were designing a curriculum for journalism, advertising and public relations students today, what are the 5-10 most important skills it should teach? What should this college do to distinguish itself from the 100 plus other accredited colleges?

In these rapidly changing times, we are constantly re-thinking our curriculum, so your answers would come at a perfect time. Please help us make sure that Nebraska students stand out as the best.

E-mail your thoughts to me at gkebbel@unl.edu.

A theme of our work this fall was creating new classes to respond to current industry needs. Some of those classes are:

1. creating mobile news and advertising applications in partnership with The Omaha World-Herald;
2. developing new products (On Day 1, the students are told that by the last day of the class they will have developed an online digital product – but they have to decide what that will be.);
3. the Nebraska News Service, where students will cover state government and the state legislative session and distribute text, audio and video reports to news organizations throughout the state;
4. a student-run advertising agency, where students will work for clients in a real-life setting (and get real-life money for it!);
5. mobile reporting in Sochi, Russia, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Students will produce news reports, ads and marketing information on mobile devices and design it all to be distributed on mobile devices. This class also will begin what I hope will be a new emphasis for us: reporting on the communities hosting the Olympics. We plan to do this in the three to four years before the Olympic Games come to that community. During this time, those communities are being transformed by the presence of the Games, and we want to document that.

To give you an idea of our recent accomplishments, here’s a list:

• The College of Journalism and Mass Communications recently received word that it will receive a $1 million endowment to continue sending students around the world to document human need. The endowment will pay for student travel costs. An additional $300,000 was given to purchase top-of-the-line Canon equipment for two trips a year and to remodel the old wet darkroom into a multimedia classroom.
• We are one of six colleges where ABC News has established a student bureau that writes and produces stories for abcnews.com and the network.
• We are one of six colleges that teach students to be interns in the prestigious Dow Jones News Fund Editing Program.
• We are one of 12 colleges in the Carnegie-Knight Initiative for the Future of Journalism Education. We are one of 12 colleges in the Carnegie-Knight Initiative for the Future of Journalism Education. This is an elite group of the best schools in the country that includes Harvard, Northwestern, Columbia University, USC, Missouri, University of California, Berkeley, Syracuse, North Carolina, Maryland, Missouri and Arizona State. One of the initiative’s programs, News21, seeks new ways to tell compelling national stories using the latest digital tools. Nebraska fellow Aaron James’ work at Columbia University recently was featured in the Washington Post and The New York Times on the same day. Another Carnegie-Knight program gave students the opportunity to produce two depth reporting projects – one on Native American women and another on Bolivia.
• Our advertising students placed first in their region and fourth nationally in the American Advertising Federation’s annual competition.
• We won a national grant to use mobile devices and websites to inform and help Lincoln’s refugee communities connect to civic life and services.
• A journalism student was chosen by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to travel with him to write about the lives of people in poor African nations. He beat out about 900 others who applied.
• One of our broadcasting students won a national Hearst championship competition in 2010. Since 2005, 20 students have placed fourth place or higher in the Hearst monthly competitions and five have been semi-finalists or finalists in the championship competition.
• Two of the eight UNL students who received prestigious Fulbright scholarships are recent grads.
• Our top minority advertising students regularly are selected as some of the Most Promising Minority Students in an American Advertising Federation program.
• In a national competition, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications selected one of our faculty to be named the “Most Promising.” The association honored another for outstanding service to the Advertising Division.

Student journalists already have produced books and interactive websites from trips to Kosovo, South Africa and Kazakhstan that were financed by a previous endowment. Students who have taken part in the projects have called the experience “life changing,” according to associate professor Bruce Thorson, who oversees the college’s photojournalism program.