Texas Tech’s College of Media and Communication is working to stay current in the landscape of media-related jobs. In fall 2018, the college began what is the only degree program like it in the state that’s aimed at giving communication students varied tools that will help them succeed.
Kelli Cargile-Cook, the chair of the newly created Professional Communications Department, says the Digital Media and Professional Communication program aims to give students a breadth of knowledge, rather than a deep knowledge in one particular area.
“There is a growing need for individuals who can multitask across departments. So, here in the college of communication, we have communication studies, we have advertising, PR, journalism and creative media industries. But, what we need are people who can do a little of all of that. Our alumni were particularly interested in this and supportive of it because so many of them have changed careers over the years and their career paths have taken them into different areas of communication,” she’s explains.
The degree program currently has about 30 students. Two-thirds of those are taking courses on Tech’s Lubbock campus. Cargile-Cook says the goal is to get that number to about 300 within three years.
“We’re expecting that our regional campuses will grow this program very quickly. We’re set up now for Waco, but we’re working on getting Fredericksburg included. We have a new regional campus in Rockwall that is just amazing, and other campuses.”
In the works now are discussions about merging another College of Media and Communication degree program into the new one.
“We also are working on moving a degree that has been in the college a long time into our department, and that’s media strategies,” she says. “That program is for students who are entrepreneurial and want to do market analytics, media insights and perhaps even run their own businesses and be consultants. There are over 200 majors in that degree now.”
Courses in the Digital Media and Professional Communication program are taught in three different ways.
“We have face to face, here and in Waco. We have online, the professor interacts with them through discussion forums and other means of communication. And then the third one is an interactive video. So, the professor might be in Waco, but the students are sitting in other regional sites,” she says.
Students in the new degree program are required to take 18 elective hours in the process of communications and 18 others in how to identify one’s audience in a targeted way. Twenty-one other elective hours focus on applied courses, which lets students dive into specific types of professional media, such as sports or politics.
Cargile-Cook, who moved from Tech’s English department to lead this new one, says a recent check of one online job site shows that there are about 7,000 entry-level jobs in Texas for which this degree would be a good fit.
“Do you know any organizations that don’t have any kind of communications component? It’s important and I think that looking at our Texas employment statistics, what’s out there, what jobs are being advertised.”
The new program is geared toward students who are not yet ready to commit to one particular area of communication, but provides students a custom-designed specialization geared toward their communication interests.
Cargile-Cook notes that in her almost 30 years in academia she’s never seen a new degree program and a new department started at once.
“This is exceptional. I think that it’s a unique opportunity to see how we can start with this very good idea and sort of hone it, given what our students teach us to make it an excellent degree,” she says.
