Student Service
The department continues its commitment to the concept of service learning and several faculty members have incorporated service learning into course requirements. The involvement of students and faculty in solving local community problems and enhancing local public and nonprofit programs provides "hands-on" learning while, hopefully, also instilling a sense of community responsibility and "volunteerism" in students. Dr. Chase has provided significant leadership in this area.
The
Department has a very large internship and cooperative education
program. This program
serves an average of 120 students per semester
during the academic year and up to 40 students during the summer
term. Most of these students are placed in one of the 300+ internships
that are regularly available. In addition a number of students
each semester create their own internships with guidance
from the Internship
Coordinator.
A wide variety of internship and cooperative education placements
are available to communication studies students. Opportunities
exist at television and radio stations, public relations and advertising
firms, in a variety of state and local government agencies, in
a
wide variety of nonprofit organizations and in a number of local
businesses. We try to place interns according to their concentration
or area of emphasis. We have a number of media students interning
at broadcast stations and production houses, public relations interns
at PR firms or in public information capacities at government agencies,
organizational communication interns doing organizational training
and event planning, interpersonal communication interns working
in mediation and in non-profit settings and multimedia interns
in a
variety of organization settings that need help with web design
and other multimedia needs.
