A new curriculum will be put in place for incoming journalism students in the fall of 2015 that will include several electronic media classes as general requirements.
Faculty members made the decision last semester to house the Department of Electronic Media under the School of Journalism. This is a change to the original plan of merging electronic media communication and journalism, according to Dr. Dwight Brooks, Dean of the School of Journalism.
Seven EMC courses will now be merged with the journalism major. This change will require students to complete at least two EMC courses upon graduation.
Three new professors will be introduced to the School of Journalism in the fall of 2015.
“These personnel will allow us to teach all of these courses that EMC offers,” Brooks said.
“I appreciate the idea of implementing necessary EMC classes,” said Kimi Taylor, sophomore journalism student. “Our society is social media based, and journalism now requires mediums to be socially connected with the world, and in order to do that, journalists need to have some sort of experience operating equipment or being behind a camera.”
Once the new curriculum is in place, incoming students majoring in any concentration of the School of Journalism will only be required to have one minor. Brooks said he believes removing the second minor will allow the programs to “go into much more detail.”
“I think changing to one minor is a good idea because then you’d get to spend more time on your major and and actually go into depth instead of having to split up your time between two minors,” said junior advertising major Brandon Hernandez.
Enrollment for the School of Journalism has dropped 50% over the last few years, Brooks said. He believes that the curriculum changes will give MTSU the tools to recruit more journalism students, as it will “train [students] the way they need to be trained and better prepare them for the future of journalism.”
“It is a process that will take time. We may make some mistakes along the way, but I am very confident about the program we will have,” Brooks said.
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