"To Converge or to not Converge"

As the proposal is still in the air about whether or not Butler University should create an official School of Communications, my position is pretty clear. I think that this creation will make our Journalism program more attractive to prospective students. The school will also create more well-rounded Journalism for an era that is requesting more than one concentration or specialty. When you look at the top schools for communications http://www.collegecrunch.org/rankings/the-20-best-schools-for-communications-majors-in-2009/ in the nation the main words used to describe them are contemporary, interdisciplinary, and for advancement. Meaning that they are new, updated to today's fields of communications current state, and are all intertwined with one another. This is what Butler's LAS should be aiming for.

As I talked with a journalism prospective that was shadowing me last week and whom also had the opportunity to sit in on this meeting, she expressed that the College of Communications would be a good thing. She expressed how she was torn between Butler and another university. The other university offered it all within Journalism, whereas Butler was seperate. I feel that this is the opinion of many prospectives and could be a reason why we didn't have that many incoming Journalism majors with my class, accompanied by the fact that the economy is affecting our field.

As a print major, I love what we stand for and why we write for communities but that isn't my only desire. I would like to be a broadcast journalist, my minor, as well and ultimately write for a magazine as I've expressed in previous blogs. Okay, that's easy because those are my major and minor. What if I become interested in producing or any other behind the scenes media job? I could take classes for that but it would be time consuming and extremely hard to balance between my major and minor required courses. I've been told that it would be smart to know how to do it all because that's employers are looking for. Therefore if you're reading this and your votes count, I can't tell you what to do but if you vote for the creation of School of Communications than you're voting for the future Journalist of our generation.