Communications is finally getting the respect it deserves on college campuses. At last month’s luncheon, speaker Deborah Barrett announced that Rice University has recently established a Program for Communication Excellence for its students. “We plan to position our communication program so that it reaches all students across the curriculum as part of their general education to ensure that our students obtain the level of communication excellence needed to be the global citizens we hope they become.” That’s what it says on their Web site. They have recognized the importance that communication plays in their graduates becoming successful engineers, business executives and scientists. Awesome! To read more about Rice’s program, see www.rice.edu/comm.
I am also very proud of the great strides that the IABC Student Chapter at the University of Houston has made. The chapter now has 20 members, led by Lauren Fry, president. The group has shown its creativity in sponsoring events of great benefit to its members. They have launched a lunch-time program called Pizza with the Pros in which they invite students to share a slice with a communications professional.
They also hosted a Media Homecoming event which featured a panel of UH alumni media types who shared their experiences in how they landed their jobs and advanced their careers. It was a standing-room-only crowd. I think the panel offered some interesting insights. The television and radio guys have been in the field for a while (seasoned I believe we say). Both wore suits. Another panel member was a former radio reporter now in media relations. She offered a unique perspective of going to the dark side. And the two guys who just graduated I mistook for students and not speakers (Oops!). Both work at the Chronicle. Both wore jeans. Both are bloggers–one in arts, one in sports. Both are contract personnel, which seems to be the way of the printed press these days.
One message they could all agree on was, “Don’t expect to land that end-all, be-all job right out of college. Be persistent. Be prepared to fetch the coffee, work the holiday shifts if that’s what it takes.
I am very proud to see communications students taking advantage of these programs. It would have been great to have this type of support when I graduated from UH in 1981. Thanks to IABC Board Member Lauren Bohnstedt and UH School of Communications rep and teacher Mike Emery for launching the student chapter. Thanks to Lauren Fry for being an outstanding first president and assembling an enthusiastic board. The UH IABC Chapter is one of only 25 student chapters in the IABC international organization and the only active one in Texas right now.
Houston universities rock!
