TIME NOTICE: This article was written by a student in the Journalism Fundamentals class in the 2024-2025 school year and may not reflect the most current information of the date of publication.
Eastern University’s Communication Studies department is adding an application focus to several of its courses and bringing a new spark into the digital media concentration. The expansion comes this year as the department has hired two faculty members who previously taught at Cabrini University. The addition of these courses will enhance the media output of the department’s students and catapult them into greater success as they leave the university.
Dr. Julie Morgan, chair of the Communication Studies Department, has been looking forward to the evolution of the program since she first became chair in 2000.
“I knew we weren’t going to be just like everybody else,” Morgan said, “but I wanted something that was rigorous, something that would help people figure out how to communicate with each other better, so that when you graduated you could feel like you had the interpersonal skills to get the job.”
Eastern’s Communication Studies department centers its degree around theories of communication and intellect, setting students up for success. Yet, there was something missing for students in the department’s digital media concentration.
“I needed to find somebody who could do the production piece, [who] also had the theoretical background to do it, could sign our doctrinal statement, and was excellent in the classroom. And by the way, we have no equipment,” Morgan explained. “Trying to go to our conferences and compete with all the other schools that were hiring, it was impossible. I would show up to conferences and they would say, ‘Eastern? Where is that?’”
With the closure of Cabrini University in May 2024, Morgan saw an opportunity. “We really are very sad that the school across the street closed,” she said. “I was often telling students to take a class over there and I knew they were getting good classes. So, when Cabrini closed, I started recruiting.”
This fall, Eastern welcomed the former chair of Cabrini University’s Communication Department, Dr. Dawn Francis, and Media Professor John Doyle as full-time faculty in the department. With the addition of these faculty members with media experience, the department is now able to offer students hands-on courses with technology that it has never seen before.
As a result, the department was able to add courses this semester such as Podcasting, Journalism Fundamentals, Multimedia Story Creation, and Event Planning. Students are now able to take courses where they will rent and use department-owned cameras and audio equipment. They will also have access to a new media editing bay and podcasting studio in the library. Students will even have the opportunity to DJ on a new streaming radio station, which is set to debut in the Spring 2025 semester.
These courses and media experiences will develop, “skills in how to see the world both through your eyes and then how to translate that into the eyes of another through your device,” Doyle said. “We live in a society where people have a lot of access to technology and don’t actually know how to use it.”
The main goal of Cabrini’s communication program, Francis said, was to, “prepare students to be engaged citizens of the world through their communication skills.” She feels that the mission is similar at Eastern. “If we could build that there, we can continue to build that here in partnership with those that are here already.”
Both professors believe in working with what already exists in the department and enhancing those characteristics with the gifts they possess.
“One of the things I love about this department with all of the interpersonal stuff, which we did not have at Cabrini, is [that it’s] crucial to effective team management, effective relationships with subjects, all of that. Those skills become part of a professional mode of work,” Doyle said. “Change is abusive. Evolution is a process where we are engaging the existent form. What works best survives.”
Many of the courses that Doyle and Francis are introducing at Eastern were developed for a Cabrini community that already had the background knowledge of the technology that is only now available at Eastern. Students and professors are expanding their knowledge of what it looks like to jump into the unknown of media technology.
At Cabrini, courses like Multimedia Story Creation were preceded by a prerequisite course to teach students how to use equipment and editing software; yet, at Eastern, because of the newness of the course and wanting to ensure upperclassmen get to experience it, students here are facing this course and others like it head on.
Senior Communication Studies major, Ryan Drobnick, has embraced the challenge. “I’ve enjoyed the new perspective that these courses have had,” he said.
Drobnick is excited about the new ways these courses will further prepare him for the future. In Multimedia Story Creation, he will create a portfolio of his work in the course and be able to present that to future employers.
As the university’s Communication Studies department evolves, it’s clear that its focus extends beyond technology to keeping that communication human. “At the end of the day,” Francis said, “It’s not the technology that matters. The technology is only an enabler. What it enables is a better humanity.”