The Collegian
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Leadership in Journalism course an interdisciplinary success

The two professors co-teaching the university seminar "Leadership in Journalism" are excited about leading an interdisciplinary course, fulfilling The Richmond Promise, they said.

Journalism professor Tom Mullen and leadership professor Tom Shields started working a year ago on the university seminar they are teaching this semester, Shields said.

The university seminars are new for the university, and were started by the Provost's Office to push cross-school collaboration, Shields said. There is an application and nomination process for these seminars, and then of course, students must choose to take them. Leadership in Journalism is the only seminar this semester for which students enrolled, they said.

The class offers both the teachers and students a course that features the leadership aspects of journalism, Mullen said. "The leadership component helps the journalism students to realize what we do is more than just writing a story," he said.

The 16-student class is made up mostly of journalism and leadership majors, with some students in the middle, Shields said. All of the students are either juniors or seniors, they said.

Senior journalism major Molly Gentzel is enrolled in the class, and after only two meetings said she would recommend the class to other students.

"They're two fun professors," she said, "and they want to make it a casual atmosphere. They make it work really well."

The atmosphere, along with the fact that most of the students know one another from previous classes, allows for comfortable discussion, Gentzel said.

To push the dialogue, the professors pair leadership and journalism students together in small groups, and ask them to consider questions from both perspectives, Mullen said.

"There's the two of us co-teaching," Shields said, "but the third teacher in the classroom are the students. We want them to be engaged, to the point that they're almost leading the class."

The class will cover mainly texts about journalism, through the eyes of leadership, Shields said. Recurring themes throughout the class will include ethics, discipline, service, truth and the role of citizenship, the two professors said.

Both Mullen and Shields would be willing to teach this course again, or another cross-curriculum seminar like it, they said. Seminars such as this one help to enhance a teaching community, Mullen said. "There may be something that we exchange that maybe a year from now, six months from now or two classes from now, I use in another class that I would not have thought of before," he said.

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Having taught in various disciplines before, Shields said leadership and journalism could both be well paired with a number of other subjects.

Combining journalism with other subjects would be a great idea, Gentzel said. "I think that's what journalism students want, especially now since it's changing so much."

Knowing what students want is important for professors, and sometimes they know better than professors what kinds of classes they want to take, Shields said.

Mullen and Shields both said they thought it would be a great idea for students to be able to propose cross-curriculum courses, based on their interests. Students are having more asked of them when they graduate too, Shields said.

Contact staff writer Maggie Burch at maggie.burch@richmond.edu

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