By Anna Bryson
Changes are coming to the journalism department next year.
The department is undergoing revisions to its course requirements in the undergraduate department, the graduate and the Food Writing and Photography program.
The undergraduate Journalism and Digital Communication program is replacing two required courses with ones that focus on digital media. The required courses News Editing and Research Methods are being replaced with Advanced Reporting and Multimedia Reporting.
The new classes will have a greater focus on digital media and hands-on reporting, while still focusing on the same skills of the prior courses.
Monica Ancu, coordinator of the undergraduate program, said that they have been talking to alumni and studying the job market to create courses that will best prepare students for the digital age.
The program revision will take place in fall 2018 for new students entering the program. Students admitted prior to that will not be required to take the courses, but will have the option to take them as electives.
The graduate Journalism & Digital Communication department will be a hybrid, offering both online and face-to-face classes beginning in fall 2018.
“We felt that by combining the programs, we could have the best of both worlds,” said Mark Walters, graduate coordinator.
The Food Writing and Photography Certificates, a program for non-degree seeking students, plans to revise its curriculum as well.
Janet Keeler, coordinator of the program, wants to create more leeway within the program so students can tailor their courses to what they need.
Keeler’s proposal would change the requirements from 15 credit hours to 12 credit hours and discontinue the requirement to take Law and Ethics and Multimedia Reporting.
Unlike the revisions to the graduate and undergraduate programs, the revisions to the Food Writing and Photography Certificate are still in the proposal process and have not yet been approved.
Pictured Above: The Peter Rudy Wallace Florida Center for Teachers is home to the universities journalism department. Jonah Hinebaugh | The Crow’s Nest
A previous version of this article mislabeled Dr. Ancu’s position and the undergraduate and graduate programs official name.
“A previous version of this article mislabeled Dr. Ancu’s position and the undergraduate and graduate programs official name.” Yup, sure seems to make a lot of sense to stop requiring students to take an editing course. Not only the errors that were corrected, but there’s the missing apostrophe in “programs” that is needed in the correction. Maybe the department figures the editing course was just lousy, if this is representative of its students.