Communication & Digital Studies Virtual Information Session

Hello everyone, I'm hoping everyone can see me and can hear me OK but if you can't if you would just enter a little chat for me.

Alright, well thank you all for joining us today and welcome. We want to talk to you about you em. WS communication and Digital Studies Program. I want to thank you so much for joining us using this nontraditional method which is growing in popularity. Excuse me as we see more and more and we're going to talk about that a little bit today so we can understand exactly why a major in CDs is so valuable. So first I want to introduce myself.

And then I'm going to talk to you all about how we're going to organize this web and R. And then, of course, we want to hear from you on. See if you all have some questions. So First off, my name is Adrian Goldman. I am an assistant professor of communication and I teach and the communication and Digital Studies program.

Excuse me, I'm a lot of my students like to call me doctor Goldman or like to call me doctor. GI am also joined today on our web and R by doctor on in row. He is the director of the communication and Digital Studies program and doctor Rao is going to jump in at the end of our webinar today to see if you will have some questions that maybe he can answer for you. So doctor Ralph, thank you for joining us and we will see you very soon.

So this is our plan for today. I want to talk to you all about communication and digital studies at umw. We're going to divide it in three different ways. First off, what is CDs? Why should we study it in the 1st place? So we'll talk about that. Then I'm going to explain to you why is it that you should study communication and digital studies here at University of Mary Washington and then the last thing that I'm going to talk to you about is how you can go about studying communication and digital studies here at umw. So before I move forward, one of the things that I want to point out is that you're going to hear me say CDs alot.

And that's just the acronym that we use for communication and digital studies. So anytime you hear me say CDs that's referring to our program.

So 1st I'm going to talk to you about the options that are available to you here at umw first we have our major in communication digital studies and that's going to be the thing that I'm going to focus. Most of the discussion on today. However, if you do major in a different area, you are available. You are able excuse me to minor in communication digital studies.

Now, one of the questions that would have you all presented to us before the web and our is, can you study journalism here at umw? Absolutely, there are several opportunities for you to do that. One way is, let's say that you major in common digital studies will. Then you could minor in journalism. Let's say that you don't want to take on a miner. Well, that's OK as well. There are several journalism classes that you can take as part of the CDs major.

So what is CDs? Why do we set it in the 1st place? Why do you think about how we're taking two areas of study and really marrying them together? First we think about traditional understandings of communication. So, for example, think about public relations. If I'm trying to take the reputation of my organization and make sure that it's positive so that they're getting supported by potential consumers. Or let's say I'm interested in political communication.

And I want to see how I can use communication to encourage individuals to be involved with political activities in some type of way.

Maybe I wanna look at Mass Communication and how we're taking this message and delivering it to mass audiences. So we consider all of these traditional areas of communication and then we combine it with these digital tools and these digital spaces and these digital platforms.

So what we do is we ask ourselves how can we engage in communication and digital spaces? What are the digital tools that we can use to engage with individuals to express our identity to handle business practices? Something that we're seeing now as you take part in a major in communication digital studies. What you're doing is you're learning about the role of communication you're learning about how we operate in these digital spaces, how we can do so effectively and ethically.

How doing so can create these digital cultures we learn about how all of what, all that entails. We also teach you how to use these communication and digital tools again both effectively and ethically. Excuse me.

It's no surprise that communication is a really valuable skill for employers. I want you to take a look at this table when I slide. Excuse me is from the National Communication Association and what it's showing as they talked to employers. And if you look at the chart four or five employer stop with these, learning outcomes were essential for potential employees. If you look on the other side of the chart, you'll notice that at least 80% or more of employers also said that those outcomes were extremely important.

On a scale of 1 to 10, they're entities either being an 8:00 and 9:00, or 10.

So let's look at some of these different areas and I want you think about how studying common digital studies can help you with each of these. I'm even going to highlight a few classes that we offer at umw.

So firstly, ability to effectively communicate orally while we offer a public speaking class that is required for CDs majors. But you'll have opportunities to work on your communication or your oral communication skills. Excuse me and several different classes. For example, we have speaking intensive courses, so even if it's not a public speaking course, you have the opportunity to practice your ability to orly, communicate with people effectively an ethically.

Another skill is the ability to work effectively with others and teams. Now I'm sure some of you all have some horror stories related to group work, right? We've all been there. Well, we also offer a small group communication course that's also required for CDs majors, and this helps you to be able to effectively work in teams.

The ability to effectively right with your communication just like we have speaking intensive courses in our program. We also have writing intensive courses. So while you're right and all of your courses, there are some that will give you additional practice with being able to communicate effectively with your writing.

And then we have courses that touch on these areas in terms of ethical judgment and decision making, critical thinking and analytical reasoning and also the ability to apply these skills outside of a classroom. Throughout the presentation I'm going to highlight different ways that are different courses touch in this area and I'm going to specially going to highlight how we give you some real world experience as part of our program.

Yes.

So one thing we can't deny is that we can see how CDs is so valuable right now in front of us because of what's happening with code in 19 me. Think about it so many different practices. So many workplaces are now working remotely and consider how would be so valuable to have an understanding of Common Digital Studies. Again, knowing how to use and understand these traditional areas of communication and then transition into these digital spaces.

Our students are able to handle that transition a bit smoother because they have these skills that they learned across our classes. For example, I even have one of my students who's in senior seminar right now, and she has actually been helping educators learn how to use different tools online so they can continue this learning process with their students.

But even outside of the workplace, think about how so much of your communication is now transitioning to this digital space. Do you know about these tools? Do you know how to use them effectively? Do you know what it means to even use those tools? Those are things that we explore as part of this major, and things that we see are very valuable right now.

Even think about how we're handling Health Communication right now and how we're using digital spaces to do that. Whether it's reading an article online to learn about different symptoms that we should lookout for, or if it's someone having a therapy session using zoom.

We're also collecting our News Online now and this is something that we saw happening before Cobain, 19, but even more now as we're practicing social distancing and this major you learn about digital journalism, you learn how to process it. You learn how to create it. You also learn how to identify problematic features like fake news, which is something that we're dealing a lot with now as well.

And then you can even think about online public speaking, which I'm showing you an example of right now, right. There are so many different examples that I'm sure you have encountered ever since we moved so much of our lives online.

Being able to not only understand how to give a strong speech, but how to do so in a digital space is something you can learn as a CD S major.

And then we continue to see the value of community and civic engagement and we can see how that can take place online. Again, these are all things that you learn about as part of the major.

So that tells you a little bit about CDs. What is it and why we should study it? But now the question is, why should you study at umw? I'm glad you asked. Let's talk about that a little bit. First of all, I want to highlight some things about our program. It's interdisciplinary, it's forward thinking, and it's flexible. Now I'm going to talk about each of these different areas in the future slides, but I want to highlight a few things for you right now.

In terms of interdisciplinary, there's a lot of crossover with our courses in other areas, so there's an opportunity for you to take electives across various areas. Or you could even consider a double major.

Some popular areas for crossover include political science, alot of our students are CDs majors. Go into art, English, music and business is another popular area.

Another thing is forward thinking. We just talked about how CDs is such a growing field that's so important. And again we offer so many opportunities for students. For students excuse me to learn tools in the class.

Thanks and then apply them outside of the classroom and we're going to talk about a few of those.

But I also want to pull in one of the questions that you are presented before the web and R. Someone asked if in the program do you have the opportunity to actually learn how to create these digital tools and how to apply them. And the answer is yes, you have several opportunities to be able to learn such things. So for example, we have our intro to digital studies. Course Ann are applied Digital Studies course courses, both of which allow you to take what you've learned and put it into practice. The intro course, for example, gives you a website domain.

It allows you to practice with that space so you get practice right off, but you don't have to be feel intimidated if you don't know everything coming into the classroom. That's OK, you gotta learn.

There are other courses that you could take as well, like Art 104, which is digital approaches to fine art, or see PSE 106 computer science in that's for digital storytelling. So there are several opportunities where you will be able to learn about these different tools and apply them.

And then the other thing about our program is that it's very flexible. Again, there's only so much opportunity for you to take different electives. In fact, 1/3 of your credit is made up of electives, so you can have some fun there. You can explore other areas and see how it ties in with your CDs major.

We also have various course offerings face to face those traditional settings, but we also have those nontraditional settings such as night classes or even online offerings.

One of the reasons why you should study at umw is because of the awesome faculty we have. We have 8 full time professors and lecturers that work in our Department or excuse me that teach in our program.

I've already introduced you to professor out again. He is the director of the program and he is a full professor, so he teaches courses in small group in visual rhetoric. But he also brings in his research interests in argumentation and debate as well as social media.

Next, you have professor wailing. You can see him on the screen. He teaches some of our digital studies courses, including intro to digital studies, and he also brings in some of his research area, including digital media and video games. So sometimes you can see those courses also pulling in that research area.

Professor Johnson young, or as her students like to call or EJY. She is an assistant professor in our program. She teaches small group communication. She teaches campaigns, communication. She also brings in her research interest in terms of Health Communication and gender. In com to also offer classes to students.

Professor Super Manian is our professor. She teaches classes in journalism, excuse me and such as news journalism in magazine journalism and then she also brings in her research area that ties to convergence, journalism and science communication.

We also have professor Blevins, another assistant professor. She also teaches some of our digital studies courses, including the intro course. But she also brings in some of her research interest to offer courses and things like virtual reality, augmented reality, and digital expressions of identity.

Next, we have professor Crosby, another assistant professor. She teaches public speaking, rhetorical theory. She also brings in some of her research area to offer classes, anjuran communication, and also in sports communication. So, for example, right now, professor Crosby is offering a special topics course on sports and the digital. So again taking this traditional area, how we present on sports communication. But then how does it occur in this digital space? So students have had a really fun time exploring that topic.

Next on the list is me professor Goldman. I might each public speak speaking research methods, digital rhetoric. I also like to bring in my research interest on pop culture, social media, and even next semester I'm scheduled to teach a class on hip hop. So again, a fun way to bring in some research, but also a way for you all to learn some interesting topics.

Precious Tamil offer some of our digital studies courses as well and then he brings in some very cool experience in terms of documentary and that's another way that you can learn from our faculty. So as you can see we have an awesome team here with a wide variety of different areas of study. And while each of them will teach areas that are required for the major, we also have opportunities for you to learn about their different areas in the classes such as special topics, courses and I'm going to revisit that in a few.

So In addition to our awesome faculty, we also have success. One of you raise the question of well, what's going on with students who have graduated? What are they doing now? That's a fair question, right? You come here. You get a degree. You want to know you can use it. And we've already talked about how it's such an area that's growing. Let's show you how some of our graduates have gone on to pursue other opportunities.

This slide shows you about some of the graduate programs, and then we can click over to one other slide and show you how.

We can look at job placement, so this map shows you some of the examples of students in terms of their graduate programs and job placement.

Another tidbit I want to share with you for the UMW class of twenty 1971% are employed full of part time. 57% are continuing education and 3% of gone on for volunteer or military service. So that's 89% of those students have gone on to pursue other opportunities.

What were the names of some of these figures?

Here are some examples of some of the students who have gone through our program and our nails and are now pursuing graduate degrees.

You'll notice that many of them have gotten graduate assistantships, which is funding that helps you with getting your graduate degree, and that's always A plus. So you see, we have students at the University of Washington, Virginia Tech Wake Forest University of Alabama, Auburn an NYU.

And then we can even think about employment.

Take a look at this slide. It just shows you some of the examples of our CDs majors who have gone on to find employment, know how some of them even did an internship as part of their undergraduate experience, and we're going to talk about internships in a minute as well.

But I showed you these slides just again to highlight how this program can prepare you to get a job and that people do recognize the value of a CD S major.

So I've talked to you about you know What is this CD S saying we're talking about, right? What does it mean? What is common digital studies? And then I've even told you about why you should study common digital studies here at umw. Now I want to talk to you about how you can go about studying it here at umw.

I mentioned earlier there is a lot of flexibility. Well, that's a real selling point here and I'm going to walk you through some of that flexibility. But another thing that I'm going to walk you through is the amount of guidance that you get here at umw.

Not only do you have an advisor who is a part of the program, but there are so many online resources that allow you guidance even when you were working on your own and I'm going to walk through some of those with you today. So first, let's consider this umw coursework. How do I get this degree? Let's think about this split up in three different buckets, right? The first bucket would be your general education requirements, and this is 37 credit hours. That's the same across all majors, and it spread up in different areas that helps to build a foundation.

To help you learn how to investigate different areas of study and then also to learn how to make connections both on campus but outside of campus in with the community.

The second bucket is your major kindness sofora CDs major that would be 30 six credit hours spread across three different areas. Your communication core, your digital studies core and your major elective. So you see how we have that traditional focus of calm, again pulling in that focus on digital studies with that core, and then you have those major electives giving you some flexibility to explore even beyond the major. And then that third bucket is another group of electives. This will be 47 credit hours.

And this is another opportunity for you to explore other areas of study that you might be interested in.

For some, this might even be a way for you to learn if you want to do a double major, or if you want to pick up a minor.

So let's breakdown the CDs. Major requirements. That's bucket number 2 on our screen.

So first you have your communication corn that's 15 credit hours and so then we have some of those required courses. They also want to point out how those required courses tie back to those communication skills that employers identified as being important. So remember, we have that public speaking that goes with our strong world communication skills. We have that affective team work that goes along with our small group communication. You learn about investigation, critical thinking and reasoning. Through intro to rhetoric and communication, communication and research methods.

As well as a seminar digital rhetoric. So again, with each of these required courses, you're getting several other skills that employers have identified as being valuable.

So Bester Communication Core and then we move over to your digital studies for and that would be 9 credits. And this is when you would take your intro to digital studies and your applied digital studies forces. So again, the intro course helps you to learn some of these tools and then you'll take several electives such as digital approaches to find art and then by the time you get to your applied digital studies class, now you're able to show us what you've learned and you're able to apply those tools that you've learned throughout the rest of your coursework.

And then that third slot for your CDs major would be the different electives that you can choose from. So let's take a look at some of the electives that you could select.

Now this is just a few right now. I know it's not a few in terms of three, but this is just a few in terms of a huge amount of elected that you can take and that's one of the great things again. There's a lot of opportunity for you to explore and is to decide what you want to take and if there are other areas that you want to consider.

You'll notice how again that arts 104 digital approaches to find art arts 219 digital video production digital storytelling, so you're continuing to see how we're pulling in those digital tools.

You'll notice that I've highlighted some of these electives in Green. The reason why I've done that is because I want to highlight two things for you on our next slide.

First, concrete 70 is what we call a special topics course. This is a great opportunity for our faculty to bring in some of their research interests and then present it to you in a class. It also helps us to keep our course offerings new. We've had special topics courses in Health Communication I've offered when it pop culture and again I'm offering one coming up and hip hop culture and Professor Crosby is having an awesome time in her sports and digital special topics course.

Another thing that I want to highlight is the individual studies and the internship. So I want to highlight that for two reasons, number one, an individual study is a great way to tie in even more flexibility with your program. Let's say that you're looking through everything and you say you know what this really interests me, but I want to study this particular topic when individual study gives you that opportunity to do that, Ann. To earn credit, you would design the course you would link up with a professor to service your advisor and then.

You would work on a project that matches your interest.

So some examples I just sponsored as an independent study. Excuse me for one of my students out of my pop culture class who was really interested in Golden girls, The Golden Girls. So what she decided to do is she wanted to do a full content analysis of several different episodes of The Golden Girls and talk about how it ties to our understanding of race and sexuality. And so she uses semester unpacking that that project that she actually developed.

We also have examples are there was one independent study in digital literacy and higher education. There was also one in digital writing and design, so again, this is an example where you get the chance to really determine what you want to explore. It's a great opportunity.

I also want you to have to really pay special attention to calm 499. This is our internship. This is the ability for you to get some real world experience even while you're still in the classroom. And if you notice, there were several students on those previous slides who had an internship that ultimately turned into full time employment.

Now remember when I told you that you had a lot of guidance? Well, that goes along with the internship prod. The internship processes as well. Excuse me you want.

When you decide that you want to do an internship, you get to pick where it's at. We offer you guidance to help you find it. We even have different tools such as handshake from career services that helps you to actually locate these internships. So again, you have lots of room to grow. You have lots of room to explore, but you do have guidance here. People help you along the way.

And Speaking of guidance, I want to show you all another thing that's really cool here at umw.

Again, you're gonna have an advisor that's a part of the program, and that individual will be able to help you to map out your coursework and to see where you are. Well, let's say that you're home one day and you just want to see where you are, and you know you don't. You don't feel like you need to reach out to your advisor will see we are still here for you. If you go to our website and I've included the web address at the top, you'll see various tools for you to use to help you to understand how to move through this program.

One of the tabs is the courses tab and you notice that under courses there's a link for fall and summer, so you're going to always see that updated information.

When we click on that fall 2020 courses tab.

It brings us over to this screen several different things going on here that are very helpful. I've used some green areas, aeros excuse me to draw your attention to different things. First, notice you have a link to the courses offered on banner, so it shows you how to get to that information. Notice how we also have bolded classes that are offered in a different format like online or evening. So again, it shows you that flexibility and it helps to draw your attention to that.

But then let's look at how they breakdown the different courses. So again, remember I told you that com 205 and com 206 are both required for the CDs major one will notice how on the screen it is listed as requirement. So with reminding you again that this course is required an it's letting you know all the different ways that the courses offered.

The other thing is that you'll notice little letters beside such as MSI. Well, that goes back to those speaking intensive courses that I mentioned to you again, even more ways to be able to practice your ability to communicate effectively.

The last thing I want to talk to you about that again is a major selling point of view on W is the real experience and that we really move you beyond the traditional classroom. So you're learning the tools in the classroom, but we're showing you how to apply them outside of the classroom, and there are several different examples of this.

First off, I want to shine light on student journalism again. I know when if you ask him questions about journalism. Well, you think about English 301, which is our magazine writing course. Will students actually created a digital magazine about the Fredericks Burg area that was available for members of the Fredericks Burg community? So they had the opportunity to create this publication to decide on formatting, editing and all the decisions that go into actually creating a digital magazine.

Or you can think about English creating and. This is when you work with our student newspaper. The blue and Gray press again a great opportunity to be able to practice journalism, and this is a newspaper that we share with people outside of the college community.

Another awesome thing that I want to highlight about the blue and Gray Press is that ever since we've moved online, it is still functioning. It is completely in a digital format and students were able to make that transition again, highlighting how valuable it is to have this understanding of communication digital studies.

We also encourage our students to present research, the research that they've inducted, and they've created in the classroom, and these are conferences that are not just for students. These are conferences that faculty members are also presenting it, and as you can see on the slide, these are just three examples of pictures from the Cox is that students have attended, and we have often heard how people are very impressed by the type of student research our students are producing.

And even let's look at the research for this year.

For the 2019-2020 year we had 20 three students accepted to present at the Virginia Association of Communication Arts and Sciences Conference, and these individuals were taking projects that they created in their intro to rhetoric class. There pop culture, class and Health Communication. These this research study was so excuse me. These research studies were so strong that they were accepted for conference presentation. We also have three students who were present who were accepted for conference presentation at the Virginia Humanities Conference.

Again, their ability to take a project that they started in class completed and it was accepted for presentation at a conference, and that's huge.

Another thing that I want to highlight, and this is especially cool, is that these students not only were they accepted to actually presented these conferences, but umw also provided funding to help them with the expenses, and this was through the undergraduate research grant and that's just one of the many examples of how we encourage you to do this type of research here.

In addition to presenting your research at these conferences, it's also a great networking opportunity. Another way that you can network is through Lambda Pi ETA, and this is the National Communication Honor Society that is through the National Communication Association. There is over 500 active chapters. An umw is one of them and as part of Lambda Pi ETA you were able to again discuss the growing importance of communication, but then also to network with others and to engage with others.

I'm gonna show you an example of such strong networking that came from Lambda Pi ETA.

He is Christina Brandon. She was elected to the Lambda Pi ETA Student Advisory Board and this is a picture of her at the National Communication Association conference in November 2017. So again, think about that. Not only was she a part of this student organization on campus, then she was able to connect with individuals outside of campus. Imagine the networking possibilities. Imagine how that can help you even on your resume. So again, tons of opportunity for you to learn in the classroom. Tons of opportunity for you to then take what you've learned.

And apply it outside of the classroom.

So that's UMW in communication and Digital Studies. Strong faculty engage students flexible program preparing you for this career and a growing field that we see right now is so important. You're learning inside of the classroom. You're applying it outside of the classroom. It's a very student centered experience, and most importantly, we will be happy to have you here.

So at this time I'm going to ask doctor outer join in with us and if we have any questions, if you would, please leave those in the chat box so that we can answer those for you.

Hi doctor Goldman, Hi Everybody this is on and it's having a little trouble. It looks like with the video my name is Anand Rauma, faculty member in communication and thanks doctor Goldman for that great presentation. Then discussion about the Common Digital Studies program.

Hello.

Any questions?

And Doctor Al, can you hear us?

I will just hang on if anyone has any questions.

Right, well, I don't believe we have any questions, so I again want to thank you all so much for joining us today.

Oh, I'm sorry. We do have questions in the chat box. I am just not seeing them.

Alright everyone, I believe I'm back. I'm so sorry I had to refresh and then my screen froze. I do see some questions now an.

Doctor out if you're able to jump on with us to help us answer some of these.

I'm so sorry I've been missing out on all the conversations. So glad you all could hear me. So glad we finally saw that chart.

Alright, can you talk about double majoring in CDs in English? Any overlap between the course is the advantage of doing both, so there's absolutely an overlap. There are courses that you can take across English and communication, but there's only a certain amount that is that you're allowed to actually crossover, and I'm going to ask doctor route. Actually jump in and share that actual number with us.

Why you wanna just got a message that doctor al is trying to connect? So just bear with us please.

He's going to try to restart and jump back in, so we're going to jump back over to your question there. Are there any internships with TV networks? Absolutely again, the internship process is really cater to you, So what we could do is that we would look to see what TV stations are. TV networks are around that you would be interested in that are offering internships. So what you could do is that something you could work with your advisor on locating which networks are in the area that you be willing to work with, seeing what internship opportunities they have, and then we'd help you to apply for that.

I'm majoring in computer science and I'm thinking about getting in minor and digital studies with. This would be a good fit. Absolutely. I would recommend that you would speak with someone in computer science as well, just to learn a bit more about how the 2GO hand in hand. But there are several courses that you can see that already costs over, such as again, digital storytelling, which is a computer science course. So absolutely, the two would go together, you could.

Actually see how some of those digital tools would help you with an understanding of of computer science.

What about TV networks out-of-state? That's another question. I'm going to ask doctor outta chiming on just to make sure I understand. Is that as long as we actually went through the internship process, So what happens is you locate this internship and you complete this paperwork to submit to the program to make sure that the internship would actually count towards for your credit. So what we could do if it is an out-of-state one? What you would do is submit that.

Hi everyone, I'm so sorry I was kicked off. I'm gonna try to jump back in where we were.

Oh great, alright, I'm glad you can see me now. Alright, let's see if we can get back to some of those questions. So again about the TV networks out of state we are going to ask doctor out of time and all that just in case. But normally it is this process where you locate this internship. Were making sure that it fit. It fits certain requirements. For example, you're being sponsored by someone at the organization who has experience with something related to common digital studies. So even if it was out of state, you would just still submit.

That paperwork, but again will ask Doctor Ralph for confirmation on that when he's able to jump back on. Oh, there he is. High dock.

Yep.

Hey, thanks for your patience everybody. I'm sorry about that. I think our technologies revolting a little bit. Maybe we're all right now.

I'm bragging on the web and I do want to ask you just communication. We were just talking about internship out of state. Is there a problem? Is that still the same process?

Absolutely it is. We've had quite a few internships out of state. You know. I think the doctor Goldman did an excellent job talking about some of those opportunities. We have a wonderful Career Center that keeps a database of a lot of the intern ships that have been held in the past and with employers that are looking for students, they have a job and internship fair every semester that is held and that shows some great opportunities.

But we've also had some out of state intern ships, some of them that we've been able to provide from alums time. For instance, I had my social media class was visited a year and a half ago by a umw alarm who now runs digital storytelling for Major League Soccer. And he came back and talked to the class and he's based in New York City and has internships available there. So same process they can go about finding it on their own or we can help them find an internship and then were able to work with the same process to do it for credit. And that counts both in the major and also towards one of the Gen Ed requirements.

Yeah, it's a. It's been fantastic opportunity, you know, we originally thought about making that a requirement in the major an the only reason we didn't is that we do have some returning adult students that it wouldn't really work if they already have fully time employed to do an internship, but I think everybody else needs to do an internship and I tell all my advise is to make sure they do that. The last thing I would add about that is that we've also lined up probably several dozen internships lokoli just on campus or in the local area so that we can line it up so students can do multiple internships. I've had students do two or even more internships as undergraduates.

Absolutely.

And so we have some on campus that are kind of like starter internships. They're great for students that are maybe after their sophomore year, and then they can do more advanced intern ships a little later. And you can just imagine what that provides a student in terms of experience, a portfolio networking. It really makes them employable from day one.

Alright, that.

I'm sorry my it's froze on my end. Hopefully it did not freeze on anyone else is in.

We have another question about the credits for a minor in digital studies. So you're looking at 18 credit hours for the minor in digital studies. So you would take the intro to digital studies course. You would have 12 credit hours for elective that would fit for the minor and then you would have the capstone course which would be that applied digital studies course we talked about earlier.

Now I probably missed it, I'm I think you probably got to some of these questions, but did you have a chance to talk a bit about the TV network experience and internships both in state or out of state?

I did, but if you have any extra comments please feel free. I just did highlight how we would be willing to help them to locate the internship again. There's a lot of flexibility in terms of finding what's around and looking to see if these organizations have an internship opportunity and how we can help them to actually get one. But if you have.

Anything to add, please feel free.

Yeah, I would add that we've had a couple of students that in the last year and a half or so have had internships at TV stations in Richmond and in DC one who graduated just a year and a half ago had one of those earlier internships and then she was able to work at one of those TV stations soon after graduation. Within her first year working, she actually earned an Emmy for editing work that she did that TV station. She was really well prepared and had a great experience with it.

Very cool.

All right, another question. Are there any study abroad programs that tie with the journalism major doctor? I'm going to look to you.

Oh that's excellent you know we've actually have a great relationship with our Center for international education and we've had a number of students that do study abroad with the major and some of them I think with journalism I think doctor professor supermanium would be able to speak to that more directly but we've had quite a few students that do study abroad that's another thing that I've told my own kid to a college age and all my advises that you should try to do study abroad and if it all possible.

And we have a wonderful Center for international education. They have funding opportunities available. I know that they have identified programs that are the same cost or even in a couple of cases been cheaper to do study abroad in another country. In one of those programs than if they were here on campus in state. So they really explored wonderful options. And there are a number of them in journalism, programs are fairly common, so they've been very successful at finding other programs that have communication programs and courses that transferring.

Journalism programs with credits to transfer in and so that can be done and not only does not delay graduation, but they've been able to take course requirements in the major when they do study abroad, and that's because we work very closely with that center, and we can approve those courses even before they go to the study abroad experience. So I know that sometimes is something that can make people anxious, but we want to make sure we encourage that for our students, and we've been very flexible and finding those courses.

Yes.

Yeah.

Sure.

Very cool now this is a question that we already addressed, but I want to come back to it doctor. I'll just to see if you have some extra notes. Add we had a question. Can you talk about double majoring in CDs in English? Any overlap between the course is the advantages of doing both. Now did mention how there was some overlap, but if you could add a bit more about how much overlap is allowed and how those work together.

He he.

I think regardless of what you major in, you should try to double major wherever you go. Whatever you major in double majoring help set you apart from a lot of other students and I think that you could see from Doctor Golden's presentation the curriculum is set up to provide a great deal of flexibility. It's easier for some majors than others, and I think to our advantage, given that we are an interdisciplinary major, there's a lot of overlap than with other majors. The way it works at Mary Washington is that you can have up to 9 credits that will overlap between majors, so you could major in.

English and communication digital studies and that means 9 credits. Three courses that would count in both will help you complete both of those major. So think of it this way. If you have a major in English and then you add communication digital studies if you take advantage of those 9 credits and we have more than 9 credits of English courses that can count within Com Digital Studies or CDs courses that can count in English. That means adding Common Digital Studies isn't adding another 36 credits. It's adding 27 credits, so it's not that much more than a minor.

And we did that intentionally. We want to make sure that it's flexible that students can do more advanced work and double major very easily, and so that's an easy way to be able to do it. We've had a lot of double majors in English and common digital studies. Also in art there a number of Arts courses and doctor Goldman mentioned those that are in digital studies and then the electives we've had double majors in political science. We have really excellent political science and international affairs program. We've had students to given the proximity to Richmond and DC are able to do really great intern ships in either of those cities.

Go into political communication and we have overlap between those majors, and so that makes that very functional. And we're also developing the double major between Com Digital Studies an in business. We've had a number of students that will double major, and we're starting to explore more ways that we could have. Some courses count in both, but it's very doable. Certainly with those overlap credits, but even without the overlap credits, there's enough flexibility in our curriculum that you can double major, and I think that really sets you apart when you are applying for jobs.

Thankfully.

Uh, another question to CDs help with representing cultures and groups of people get question, that's actually something that we explore in a lot of our classes, right? We're always trying to figure out how do you ethically present cultures right? What does it mean to represent cultures? Why is it important to represent cultures and these are all different discussions that we have in so many different classes such as pop culture, sports in the digital, even with classes like social media and visual rhetoric we explore what is representation mean in each of these areas.

How do we understand it? How do we make sure it's done so ethically? So those are definitely areas that we do cover across the CDs major.

All right, how many adjunct faculty teach in CDs, and what courses do they teach? I'm going to ask you to chime in.

Sure, I am berries by semester and by year, sometimes based on if we have a faculty member that's on sabbatical. Of course, will have more sections that are then covered by adjunct faculty. It also is dependent upon add junks that were able to recruit to teach in particular areas. So we've had a couple of people that, for instance, of a colleague who directs our digital knowledge center. He is taught one of our digital studies courses in TV production, and so it's wonderful to be able to get him to teach that course. One of our colleagues, the University librarian.

It's taught about using the maker space, so she teaches the digital studies tinkering hacking course, and that's really fun. We have several faculty that adjunct faculty that have taught the communication 205 and 206 public speaking at small group communication, and that's partly to provide some more flexibility so that we can offer some of those sections in the evening or hybrid courses and offer extra sections. And then we've also had some local journalists that have taught at John courses in the journalism program so that we can offer greater flexibility.

And it's wonderful to be able to bring in somebody with that professional experience into the classroom to supplement what we are able to provide. So it's usually a number of sections every semester. It varies depending upon who might have professional experience in the area and who's available, but that's certainly something that we're always trying to add to supplement to the program.

Yeah.

We have another question. Is game design included in digital studies and if So what courses?

I.

Yeah.

And I do I do not I want to ask you to jump in on this one too. I hope that's right, but I do want to highlight, again, uh, the slides we were talking about faculty and Professor Whale in one of his areas of interest, and he's talking about video games, so that could be a cool way to also learn about some of our faculties experience even outside of the classroom.

Absolutely doctor whelans dissertation actually was about video game design, and in particular was really fascinating. Remember hearing a presentation about it where he studied some of the fonts that were used in early video games? He's published extensively as Co. Edited a volume about video game design and studies of video games.

So certainly in his classes there are lots of opportunities. What's great about the digital studies courses is that while they are broader courses and there's material that everyone shares in, there's a lot of opportunity for individual work. And so in particular for applied digital studies, students are developing many of their own projects, so I've sat in and being able to observe when students have developed their own video games or elements of games, or studying game design, and that's been a great opportunity. So in those courses, certainly, and then in some of the special topics in digital studies.

And I think that they also find their way into some of the digital studies courses that are listed in English, that in particular the professor Whelan has offered.

Actually, I also makes me think about the flexibility in the program. Again, whether if you know you want to do an independent study that's talking about game studies in being able to work with professor wailing. But even in my senior seminar class right now for the final project, students are able to do research on any area of study that they find enjoyable, and I have three students who are working on game studies looking at.

Our relationships are formed how we create Co cultures. Within these video games and then how they could be used as an educational tool. So a lot of people are exploring that topic.

After

Yeah, absolutely. I know that Professor Blevins, her course this semester on augmented in virtual reality. They've done some really interesting work and studying game design and also developing their own elements. And I've had a lot of fun checking them out with the Oculus systems and doing some of the video, virtual reality and augmented reality over in the early convergence center.

Yeah, even I'm thinking about last semester. I believe with the Health Communication course, they had a workshop at the end of the semester that invited community members to come in one of the sessions there. One of the presentations was on the effects on are the physical effects of video games and they talked about the experiment they had. They had pictures of individuals wearing the different goggles, so again, an opportunity to export the topic, but also to present those findings outside of the classroom and to show how it's really important and important for people understand.

Right, yeah? And really wonderful connections between CDs and computer science, and we've had a number of students that will double major. I see somebody asked about that. Maybe majoring one and minoring in the other. I would say try to double major because there is some overlap, so it's something that's feasible to fit within the curriculum and also just wonderful connections between the digital studies work and the computer science work. I remember student last year who just graduated.

Last year is currently in the grad program at University of Southern California working on virtual reality, an game design, and I remember he was doing some really interesting work just on his own, just as kind of an individual study project about virtual reality games, so it's some great synergy between the programs.

Any other questions? I believe we went through all that were included. If we did miss your question, please type it back in there for us. We don't want to miss it. We want to make sure we answer all the questions that you have.

And thank you all so much for your patience through all of our technical difficulties here.

Oh, I hear it. Cartoon Network. Awesome, I hope we can get an internship. There will definitely willing to help you work towards that.

Any other questions?

Well, thank you all so much for joining us. We hope to see you on campus very soon, or at least on this in Mesquite campus. So as we have it now, right? If you have any questions for me, I am happy to answer them. I will also include my email address in the comment section. I see press around has done the same. Thank you again so much for joining us. You all stay safe and we hope to hear from you all soon.

Great thanks everybody.