乐播传媒

Manuel Machorro Gomez Pezuela 鈥�25 of Mexico signed up for his first Short Term course, 鈥淲riting War: National Security Journalism,鈥� so he could learn more about a profession that fascinates him.

A similar impulse motivated Chloe Arons 鈥�23 of Montclair, N.J. A politics major with a minor in history who transferred from McGill this year, she鈥檚 a voracious consumer of news, listening to WNYC (鈥渆very morning鈥�), reading The New York Times and The New Yorker, and watching CNN.

Their instructor is national security correspondent Paul Shinkman, who took time off from his day job at U.S. News & World Report to teach 乐播传媒 students the basics of war reporting. He鈥檚 reported from Ukraine, Iraq, and Afghanistan as well as the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, and on the May days when he鈥檚 not teaching, he鈥檚 dialing into Zoom press conferences at the Pentagon and such to write his own stories.

But neither Pezuela nor Arons were expecting the first day of their practitioner-led course to unfold quite the way it did.

鈥淲e walked in, and immediately he鈥檚 like, 鈥榃e鈥檙e going to do a writing test.鈥欌�� Arons says. As they took their seats, Shinkman launched into a mock scenario in which a real high-ranking member of the military had just died in an accident. Shinkman gave them a few facts about this fictional breaking news story and told them to start writing. They had 15 minutes. 鈥淚鈥檓 like, 鈥榃hat?鈥欌�� Arons says, laughing. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not going to like, go around and say our names and our favorite ice cream flavor?鈥�

This kind of immersive work is the core of a distinctive type of 乐播传媒 academic during Short Term offering known as a Practitioner-Taught Course, which offer opportunities for students in areas of study that the core liberal arts curriculum are less likely to include.

Each Short Term, practitioners-in-residence come to campus to teach applied knowledge and skills in their field; students not only get that exposure but are able to expand their professional networks. Four such courses were offered this Short Term: Shinkman’s, a “Practicum in Mediation and Restorative Justice,” “Music and Health,” and “Digital Marketing.”

Every few minutes during that first day in “Writing War,” Shinkman fed his students a little more information. And every few minutes, they revised their stories accordingly, until eventually, they鈥檇 written complete stories on a tight deadline.

It was scary, disorienting, and, for Pezuela, also exhilarating as it dawned on him how hands-on this class was going to be. No researching 10 facts about journalism and turning that in as homework, but rather practicing the trade. (Peter Moore ’78 created a similarly immersive and popular journalism course in 2016.) Pezuela said he realized that 鈥渢his was clearly a teacher who cared and who knew that he was only here for three and a half weeks and he had to make the most of it. 鈥�

By the next week, Pezuela, wearing a suit (Shinkman recommends dressing the part), was sitting in a second floor classroom at the Bonney Science Center, attending a Zoom “press conference” with Katey van Dam, a contact Shinkman had made as a reporter. Van Dam was among the first women to pilot a U.S. Marine attack helicopter. After a career that included combat deployments in Afghanistan and counter-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden, in 2017 van Dam testified to Congress on behalf of women in the military and to advocate for including women in the draft.

Shinkman had devised a place and a time for the simulated gaggle: in a hallway in the U.S. Capitol right after that 2017 testimony. The students had the assignment of looking for hard news, the kind of followups that went beyond van Dam鈥檚 public testimony.

The students were all business and well-prepared, having spent the previous afternoon proposing and editing questions in groups of four divided by news bureaus. Pezuela, identifying himself as a reporter from The New York Times, grilled van Dam about her motivations for pursuing more inclusion in an institution known for its bias against women, while Arons, as a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, posed a skeptical question about the draft itself. 鈥淚f the draft wasn’t instituted after 9/11, when we had an attack on our soil, what makes you think it will ever be necessary to implement it again?鈥� Arons asked.

Van Dam spent two hours with the students and as a source she was friendly, approachable and thoughtful. 鈥淭hat was my favorite scenario,鈥� Arons says now as the course nears its end.

Short Term is a beloved tradition at 乐播传媒, but it hasn’t been held since 2019 due to calendar changes forced by the pandemic, which means most of this year’s seniors have experienced only one Short Term. Some will graduate never having experienced it.

For their second and final Short Term, seniors Douglas Amirault, a double major in economics and math from Lexington, Mass.; Sofia Edgar 鈥�22 a physics major from Boise, Idaho; and Courtney Gray 鈥�22, a sociology major from Belmont, Mass., decided to take the Practitioner-Taught Course “Digital Marketing: Changing the Art and Science of Marketing” with Ashley Hart 鈥�91.

Hart, who previously taught the course in 2017, has been an executive in the tech industry for over 20 years and has worked as corporate vice president, digital experience, for Microsoft; senior VP at Oracle; and global chief marketing officer for Infor. Earlier, she founded her own digital marketing consultancy firm, Ashley Hart Marketing.

At warp speed, Hart’s course takes students through the process of founding a digital agency, branding it, building a website and developing buyer personas. They鈥檙e figuring out how to pitch themselves to companies who need help selling. Within that, it鈥檚 essential they understand why consumers make the choices they do. Hart divided them into four groups, or four 鈥渁gencies,鈥� many of which turned out to have a sustainability angle based on the student鈥檚 interests. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e very big into sustainability,鈥� she says.

But again, Hart鈥檚 is a highly practical course. 鈥淪o it鈥檚 important for them to understand that maybe the buyer doesn鈥檛 care about sustainability,” she explains. “I鈥檓 also trying to teach them that just because something鈥檚 important to you doesn鈥檛 mean that it鈥檚 important to your buyer.鈥� She鈥檚 giving her students the analytical tools to figure out what does matter to a buyer.

While no course like this was offered while she was at 乐播传媒, Hart credits the student-led entertainment series led by what is now known as CHPB (Chase Hall Programming) as introducing her to the field of marketing. She loved promoting concerts and other events at 乐播传媒, and wanted to pursue that as a career. But as a recent graduate with a liberal arts degree, 鈥淚 had to struggle to get a job,鈥� Hart remembers. 鈥淣obody would hire me because I didn鈥檛 have a marketing degree.鈥�

Her goal is to equip her students with what they need to actually get hired. 鈥淓ven though they don鈥檛 have marketing degrees, they鈥檒l have a marketing portfolio that they can show off, with a website, and their copywriting and which shows they know how to write Google ads.鈥� She鈥檚 giving them the basics then, taught by someone who has seen every aspect of the business as it has evolved.

For Sofia Edgar, the chance to study with someone who has been a leader in the field for 25 years was enticing from both an academic and personal sense. She鈥檚 spent her time at 乐播传媒 immersed in the sciences, including astronomy research. 鈥淲e do a lot of data science,鈥� Edgar says. 鈥淥bviously from a different data set. We look at galaxies, they look at user data. But it was interesting to see the aspects that are the same.鈥�

Edgar plans to put what she鈥檚 learning about digital marketing to use in a creative side business (Hart notes that several of her students are entrepreneurs). Edgar makes and sells clay and polymer jewelry in the shape of fruit through an Etsy store, SilverLashesCo. 鈥淭he class is mostly geared toward working at an agency,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut I鈥檓 looking at the class through a small business lens and I鈥檝e been picking out the pieces that I think would be valuable to my company.鈥�

By the second week of class, Douglas Amirault was writing blog posts about mistakes startups can make. By the third, he and teammate Edgar had a professional looking, credible website for a digital marketing agency called Drinc (oriented to beverages) that he鈥檒l be able to link to on his resume. Amirault already has a job lined up after graduation, as a health economist and data science, so he鈥檚 not going into marketing.

But what he鈥檚 enjoying, as someone who has done a lot of programming on the back end of things, is seeing how front end web development works. And when he shares Drinc’s website 鈥� sleek and professional looking and featuring a nifty logo 鈥� it’s clear he’s proud of what he and his classmates created.

For many in the Practitioner-Taught Courses, that鈥檚 the joy: getting a preview of and richer understanding of how a field works. Arons feels it when she looks at all the news she consumes now and understands the components of what goes into a news story, including the lede and nut graf, and sees how different that kind of writing is from the academic oriented writing she鈥檚 used to. When she heads off to England for a summer course at Cambridge in international security and intelligence programming in July, she鈥檒l also be more prepared. 鈥淚 thought I should get a little bit of background here before I throw myself into that.鈥�

And for others, taking a Practitioner-Taught Course could make the difference in getting that first job. Gray, a sociology major with a minor in French, has already had two marketing related internships. She liked both, but they were primarily focused on creating social media. The view she鈥檚 had of digital marketing from Hart鈥檚 class feels like it will be invaluable as she starts looking for jobs after graduation.

鈥淏eing able to learn from someone who’s been so successful in the field is definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity that would be really hard to get if I didn’t do it here,鈥� Gray says. 鈥淕oing into the workforce, I think this would definitely give me a leg up.鈥�