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School of Communication NEWS Archives
High school student media event brings hundreds of participants to ECU campus
(posted Nov. 4, 2008)
Almost 300 students from 17 North Carolina high schools attended East Carolina University’s School of Communication High School Media Workshop on Oct. 28.
Held in conjunction with the North Carolina Scholastic Media Association, the event allowed 297 high school students involved with high school yearbooks, newspapers and broadcast media to learn how to improve their work.
"The high school media workshop is an opportunity for students, faculty, advisors and professionals interested in communication to gather and focus on several media topics,” said School of Communication Acting Director Dr. Linda Kean.
A number of School of Communication faculty members gave lectures during the event. Dr. Tami Tomasello presented “Design Principles for Web Content,” and Dr. Brian Massey spoke about the audience appeal of strong journalism.
Other School of Communication presenters included: Geoff Thompson (sports reporting), Tom McQuaid (facility tours), Ken Wyatt (the School of Communication studio and video production) and Steve Row (writing reviews).
“The students bring a real energy and motivation to this kind of event,” Kean said, adding that she hopes the School will host another such workshop next year. “Combined with the faculty and professional expertise, this creates a real synergy among participants engaged in the production of messages in a variety of formats."
News media members, including Lockwood Phillips—publisher and general manager of the Carteret New-Times—also took part in helping to better acquaint students with news/information gathering, reporting and presentation in the professional world.
Sidney Edwards, 17, and editor of the yearbook at her school attended with a group of other students from Northampton County High School of Pleasant Hill, N.C.
“We wanted to get some new ideas and theories to incorporate into our book,” Edwards related, adding that she felt learning to cover all 12 months (including the summer) of the year into an annual yearbook, and the use of columns, were two particularly interesting concepts covered during the morning’s lectures.
American-Jewish experience explored in film course
(Posted Sept. 16, 2008)
By Stefanie Wethington
East Carolina University added a new film studies course this fall designed to provide students with insight into an influential American sub-culture.
COMM 4040 Media, Culture and Society will focus on “Key Texts of the American-Jewish Experience in Film.” The medium utilized in the course is film, the culture examined in the class is the American-Jewish experience, and the society being studied is that of the U.S. The description of the course says that it will show “how the American-Jewish experience might be defined, its roots in both ancient texts and Diaspora contexts, and its early foothold in American popular culture.”
According to Professor Bernard Timberg, “We will focus on the experience of Jews in the
U.S. from the great wave of immigration at the end of the century to the time of our last film in the series, 'Annie Hall,' directed by Woody Allen.”
Film screenings take place at 6:30 p.m. on Thursdays in Bate 1032. The screenings are open to the public and visitors are encouraged to attend. There will be a total of 11 films during the semester.
Daniel Thompson, a student in Media, Culture and Society, said he hopes to learn “how Jewish culture influenced old films and how it relates to today’s films.”
Thompson is a senior majoring in communication with a focus in media writing and production design. He is interested in film studies and enjoys the course thus far because it “gives in-depth concepts in film.”
The course covers more than 50 years of history in film and over 100 years of history in Jewish immigration to America. Timberg based his choices on films that accurately depicted the time periods and films that were powerful.
Two of the films are in Yiddish, formerly the international language of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe and their descendants.The films feature many famous Jewish actors and actresses such as Molly Picon, the matchmaker in “Fiddler on the Roof,” and Doris Roberts from “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Some actors and actresses will reappear in a number of the films showcased throughout the course.
In the spring 2009 semester, Professor Larry Mintz, a recognized scholar in the study of American humor, will co-teach with Timberg a COMM 4040 class entitled American-Jewish Humor in Film, Television and Popular Media. It will feature another type of the American-Jewish Experience — humor. This time, literature, stand-up comedy, graphic novels, and popular films such as “The Frisco Kid” and “Borat” will be featured.
School of Comm student gets experience through radio 'boot camp'
(UPDATED July 17, 2008: posted June 17, 2008)
ECU School of Communication student, John Vaughn, is one of only five students competitively selected to participate in a journalism project for National Public Radio (NPR) and North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC.
The two organizations sponsored the radio journalism-training project for college students in the central North Carolina area as part of NPR's series of "Next Generation Radio" journalism training projects held across the country. Student journalists, including Vaughn, served as reporters at a five-day intensive "boot-camp" in mid-May. Each participant developed, reported and produced stories for broadcast on NPR's next generation radio web site and WUNC's web site, and worked under the guidance of professional journalists from NPR and WUNC.
WUNC broadcast the Next Generation project as a half hour show hosted by Frank Stasio on July 22.
More information is available at http://www.npr.org/about/nextgen/wunc2008
Two students speak on WUNC's 'The State of Things'
(posted April 29, 2008)
Two students from the School of Communication—graduate student Lauren Peaden and video production student James Gould—were interviewed for Frank Stacio's "The State of Things" on WUNC-FM for a segment of the program that will be broadcast Wednesday, April 30 from noon to 1 p.m.
Peaden and Gould appeared with Susan Hall, a peer facilitator from HOPE Station, the new peer community mental health recovery center established by East Carolina Behavorial Health in Greenville. Peaden and Gould were part of a collaboration between Professor Bernard Timberg's graduate class in health communication and Professor Erick Green's advanced video production class to produce a series of Public Service Announcements for the recovery center.
Lisa Bonnett, Executive Director of Recovery Education and Peer Supports of East Carolina Behavorial Health, centered in New Bern, N.C., partnered with Timberg and Green in this project. After receiving community feedback to the PSAs on April 15 at HOPE Station, the students worked on final versions that is scheduled to be screened May 1 at a Recovery Conference for an estimated 250–300 mental health counselors, advisors and educators at the Greenville Conference Center next to the Hilton Hotel on Greenville.
"The State of Things" archived site for the April 30th program is:
http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/sot0430b08.mp3/view
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Mental health awareness aim of community/School collaboration
(posted April 23, 2008)
By Jessica Kelly
Students and faculty of the School of Communication collaborated with ECBH Recovery Education & Peer Supports staff to help raise awareness about mental health.
Dr. Bernard Timberg, an associate professor in the School of Communication at ECU, launched this project with Lisa Bonnett, an executive director of ECBH Recovery Education & Peer Supports, to support the open house of Hope Station on 2407 S. Memorial Drive in Greenville.
Hope Station is a safe and welcoming community-based recovery education support center for adults who face mental health or substance abuse challenges or other life struggles.
Erick Green, an assistant professor in the School of Communication at ECU, had his media production students show their PSA series premiere on April 15 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Hope Station.
“I wanted to make my PSA something different, more abstract, and aimed at a younger audience,” said Tony Pham, a senior in the School of Communication. “It was a really good experience to do something in the real world and reach out to the community.”
Dr. Timberg's graduate students from Comm 6210 Media and Health Communication participated as researchers and discussion leaders for the focus groups.
Bonnett, Timberg and Green are currently working on an article called "The Pedagogy of Engagement" for Carolina Communication Annual. They will use quotes from the graduate students' reflective essays to explain “how the graduate students apply their theory and ideas to organizations in project,” said Timberg.
Bonnett decided to take this project on with ECU professors and students because, “We were struggling because we didn’t have the methods, means, and creativity and I don’t think that anyone else could have made this impact." She added that, "Dr. Timberg believes in our message and it came through on the PSAs.”
Hope Station’s message is that recovery is possible, according to Bonnett.
“I learned how to take my creative vision and collaborate with a client in order to reach their goals,” said senior communication major James Gould.
Hope Station will promote and run the PSAs on May 1 at the 2nd Annual ECBH Wellness Recovery Conference and Expo at the Greenville Convention Center.
James Rees
January 1935–April 2008 (Click here for tribute page)
Two SOC faculty members nominated for university teaching award
(posted April 14, 2008)
By John D'Angelo
ECU Communications professor Pamela Hopkins, has been nominated for theECU Alumni Association Outstanding Teaching Award.
The award was created to honor professors who excel in the classroom. Each
year only three professors receive this unique distinction.
“I am very excited and very honored and quite appreciative,” Hopkins said. “I love teaching and try to give every day 101 percent of my efforts. To be nominated
for an award that recognizes excellence in the classroom is a highlight of my professional life.”
Hopkins has been a professor at ECU since 1994. She teaches Business and Professional Communication as well as Public Speaking classes. Before teaching, Hopkins was the executive director of the Martin County Travel and Tourism Authority in Williamstown. Hopkins was also a communication specialist at the Pitt County Mental Health Center. Hopkins earned a bachelor’s in English with a minor in communication from Clemson University and a master’s in speech communication from Penn State.
Hopkins will be honored at a dinner in the end of April at a location that has yet to be determined.
ECU students attend Toastmasters Club meetings, get class credit
(posted April 12, 2008)
By Jennifer Garner
Students from East Carolina University have been receiving credit in some classes for attending a Toastmasters International club meeting in Greenville at the Sheppard Library.
“Being a member of Toastmasters has helped me improve all of my own speaking skills,” said Pam Hopkins, an instructor in the School of Communication. “Although I have done public speaking for many years, Toastmasters has helped me refine my speaking skills. I think the organization has helped me go from being a very good public speaker to being an excellent public speaker.”
Hopkins teaches COMM 2410 and COMM 2420, which are both public speaking-related courses. She has won many Toastmasters speech contests and speech evaluating contests. She has also been named as a finalist for the 2007–08 East Carolina Alumni Award for Outstanding Teaching. As part of the curriculum in her public speaking class, she has required students to attend and evaluate a Toastmasters meeting for the past year and a half.
Toastmasters International is a nonprofit organization that was designed to help people with public speaking and communication skills. At meetings, there are speakers who have prepared a speech on a given topic. Each speaker has an assigned evaluator who offers a critique of his or her speech. Slips of paper are passed around at the beginning of the meeting to all who are attending. Everyone at the meeting writes down one or two comments about each speech given at that meeting. These slips of paper are then given to the speakers at the end of the meeting as extra feedback.
Another aspect of every Toastmasters meeting is “Table Topics,” which involves random topics assigned to members. Speakers must stand and speak on the topic for one to two minutes without prior preparation. At the end of the meeting, awards are given to the best speaker, evaluator, and table topics speaker.
This same basic pattern of events is carried out during a regular semester of COMM 2410. In this class, students are required to give four prepared speeches, as well as practicing table topics.
“Toastmasters is an international organization that promotes communication skills, specifically, public speaking,” said Hopkins. “I want students in my classes to see the real life application of what I am teaching them in class.”
School of Communication 'rolling out' new laptops for classes
(posted April 8, 2008)
By Jessica Kelly
The School of Communication is happy to announce the new mobile Dell Windows computer lab, which will save both money and space while bringing students technology and a better education.
The new lab is a portable, roll-around cart that holds up to 30 laptop computers. This advancement will allow the SOC faculty to turn any classroom in the building to a temporary computer lab.
Thomas McQuaid, a lab manager for the School of Communication, said he would like to thank the School's Acting Director Dr. Linda Kean for green lighting this project, and Mike Dixon for getting the program off the ground.
According to Jennifer Cabacar, an advisor and distance education coordinator for the School of Communication, currently about 900 students are enrolled in the SOC. These students will have new advantages within the classroom setting as they participate in class with their professors and the laptops. The cart can be rolled around anywhere in the building and is helpful since ITCS wanted to put a hold on construction of new computer labs on campus.
Michael Dermody, an instructor for the School of Communication, said this improvement will be beneficial.
“Now I can teach the class in any room I want and not tie up an entire lab while my students do their online test,” said Dermody.
McQuaid added, “We have a tremendous demand for use of JE 217, a Dell computer lab. Here is a way to take some pressure off of the Dell lab.”
The new mobile Dell Windows computer lab will be available in the fall or as soon as summer depending on arrival of the laptops.
Graduate Student Association showcases
work through peer-reviewed journal
(Posted March 4, 2008)
The 2nd Edition of "The Compass" has been completed and passed out to all of the current CGSA members.
"The Compass" is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal created by the Communication Graduate Student Association to showcase and highlight the work and current research projects of the M.A. in Communication with an emphasis in Health Communication graduate students.
The journal has a strong health focus and aims to bring awareness to the growing area of health communication and to the School of Communication's graduate program.
Copies of the Second edition are for sale for $10 each. Please email Amanda Miller at amandadmiller@alumni.ecu.edu or Jessica Creson at jec1122@ecu.edu to obtain a copy.
Students get to speak with author of their reporting textbook
(Posted February 14, 2008)
For pictures of this event, go to:
athieveryconspiracy.smugmug.com/gallery/4333104_ZHbce/1/254163337_SrD7C
and click on Slide Show.
By Barbara Bullington
When reading a textbook for a course, some students might feel a sense of disconnect between themselves and the authors of that textbook. Authors, on the other hand, might wonder if their writing is clear to readers and whether any questions on their topic remain unanswered. Dr. Bernard Timberg, an associate professor in the School of Communication at ECU, is helping to bridge that gap.
Timberg arranged for an audio/video exchange between his Basic Reporting students and Tom Leib, a professor of Journalism at Towson State University and the author of “All the News: Writing and Reporting for Converging Media.” The textbook is due out from Allyn and Bacon this year. Timberg already uses an advance copy to teach his Basic Reporting students.
Skype video software was used for live video exchanges with the author during Timberg’s two sections of Basic Reporting on Thursday, Feb. 7. in Joyner East 217.
Students took turns asking questions in front of a camera, which transported the images of the students to the author in Baltimore, Maryland. The author was on view on the large screen in front of the classroom.
Some questions from students were focused on clarifying or enhancing information from the textbook. For example, one student asked what the best way was for a journalist to try to relate to his audience. Leib answered that newspapers need to learn how to relate to a younger audience and that, in order to do that, they need to reach out and learn “who’s in their community.”
Other students wanted to know more about the author himself. Leib was questioned about employment history and what job he felt had the most impact when writing the textbook. Leib, who noted that most of his professional work has been as a newspaper editor, said editing greatly informed his own writing as a journalist as well as his advice to other writers.
“When you spend the day looking at other people’s mistakes, you can’t stand to do them yourself,” Leib related.
Students also learned that the author’s inspiration for becoming a journalist came from growing up when the Watergate story was breaking. He cited the reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as something he admired.
“People were looking at journalism as a way to change…the world,” Leib stated.
On a practical level, some students suggested ways Leib could make the textbook more helpful to future readers. One student asked Leib about the possibility of writing samples to accompany some of the information in the text. The author responded that he is actually working on samples that he plans to share with Timberg in the coming weeks.
Timberg said that the two sessions with Leib were not recorded but future sessions might be. He also noted that he began using “All the News” after learning about it from a colleague who had done a review of the manuscript for the publisher. At the time, Timberg had been searching for a text that would be relevant to students increasingly faced with convergence—or the trend toward reporting for print, the Internet and broadcasts, as opposed to focusing in only one area—in journalism.
Faculty and graduate students share work
(Posted February 12, 2008)
Dr. Dave McCarty
by Jessica Kelly
Dr. Brian Massey and Dr. Dave McCarty were the key presenters for the School of Communication’s most recent colloquium, which was held on Jan. 30 in Joyner East 201.
“The colloquium is a research and creative work series designed to showcase the work of faculty and graduate students,” said Dr. Laura Prividera, an ECU assistant professor and the school’s interim associate director.
“In this environment, faculty and students can practice for future scholarly presentations and have meaningful dialogues about their work,” she said. “Feedback is helpful to all scholars. The series is designed to stimulate an intellectual venue for discussing research and creative work and to bring faculty and graduate students together.”
Massey, an assistant professor in the School of Communication, discussed his latest article, “Satisfaction of Australian Newspaper Journalists during Organization Change.” The article analyzes attitudinal data from surveys conducted over a two-year period. The co-authored article appears in the July–December 2007 edition of the International Journal of Communication.
“I do work in journalism, with a primary emphasis on journalistic practice at print and Web newspapers,” said Massey after the colloquium. “My current research agenda focuses on online, or Web, journalism; journalists' attitudes toward organizational change to their practices; and the job satisfaction of journalists.”
He added that his work is international in scope.
“I study newspaper journalists in the U.S., Asia and Australia, and their work practices,” Massey related.
McCarty, also an assistant professor in the School of Communication, discussed his research paper, “The Evolutionary Ecology of Information and Communication Networks.”
“My colloquium presentation was on a new way of analyzing the various factors that influence the ways in which information and communication networks develop over time,” McCarty said. “This approach takes several concepts from the biological sciences — concepts such as genetics, the evolution of species, environmental fitness, resource acquisition, and niche construction — and applies them to the technology, organizations, and business models that interact to shape the evolution of computer and communication networks.”
His presentation involved relating how this approach could be applied to a specific topic such as the potential for the Internet to serve as a platform for the mass distribution of high-definition television programming.
Examples of information and communication networks include the Internet, telephones, cable TV systems and broadcast networks, McCarty said.
McCarty will present his paper at the 17th Biennial Conference of the International Telecommunications Society this summer in Montreal.
The colloquiums offer “faculty opportunities to test hypothesis,” said Dr. Festus Eribo, a professor in the School of Communication.
“It's really a wonderful event and a great learning environment for all who attend,” added Prividera.
The next colloquiums are scheduled for 3 p.m. March 5 and April 9. The venues are to be announced.
Fall 2007 graduation to feature film industry professional as guest speaker
 North Carolina Film Office Director Aaron Syrett will be the keynote speaker for the December graduate recognition ceremony for the School of Communication.
The ceremony, set for 3:30 p.m., Dec. 14, in ECU’s Wright Auditorium, will recognize about 140 students receiving Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees, in addition to seven students receiving the Master of Arts in Communication.
Syrett was appointed director of the North Carolina Film Office in April 2007. He came to the Tar Heel State from Salt Lake City, Utah, where he had been director of the Utah Film Commission. Under his leadership, scenes from “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” with Johnny Depp were shot in Utah, as was the television series “Everwood,” among other productions.
Syrett has been involved in the entertainment industry since he was a child actor, and acting helped him pay for college at the University of Utah. That was where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Film, Television and Radio from the university’s School of Communication. He also holds a certificate in producing from the Rockport Film School in Rockport, Maine.
The North Carolina Film Office in Raleigh has helped to bring numerous productions to the state since it was created in 1980. Scenes from the films, “Nights in Rodanthe,” with Richard Gere, and “Leatherheads,” with George Clooney and Renee Zellweger, were recently shot in North Carolina.
As director, Syrett will help to recruit film business to the state, assist filmmakers with preliminary location scouting assistance, and serve as liaison between Hollywood and North Carolina filmmaking businesses, regional film offices and state government. More than 2,500 film industry professionals work in North Carolina.
School of Communication's second annual
reunion banquet held homecoming weekend
Mary Schulken
The associate editor of North Carolina’s largest newspaper spoke at the School of Communication’s second annual CommCrew Reunion on Oct. 27.
In addition to serving as associate editor, Mary Schulken of the Charlotte Observer also sits on the newspaper’s editorial board, and writes editorials and a weekly column. Cox Newspapers named her Writer of the Year in 2000, and she has won state press awards for investigative reporting, as well as editorial, column and news feature writing. She is a two-time winner of the O’Henry Award for writing from the North Carolina Associated Press. She will speak to an audience made up primarily of East Carolina University School of Communication alumni, faculty and other CommCrew members about her experiences in the communication field. Schulken is an ECU alumna herself, having graduated in 1979 with a B.A. in English and a minor in print journalism.
"The School of Communication is thrilled to have Ms. Skulken as the keynote speaker for our reunion brunch,” said Dr. Linda Kean, the School’s acting director. “She is a great example of the success our alumni have achieved in their chosen careers. We are proud of all of our alumni and to bring them together at this event—with friends, faculty and students—is very exciting for us."
This year’s reunion was in the form of a Brunch in Mendenhall Student Center Great Rooms.
CommCrew is a loose affiliation of alumni and friends who support the legancy, mission and growth of the School of Communication. In addition to East Carolina University communication alumni, area communication and media professionals were encouraged to attend the banquet.
EMMY AWARD WINNING JOURNALIST, COKIE ROBERTS,
SPEAKS TO SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION STUDENTS
(posted Fall 2007)
by Aisha Jones
Political commentator for ABC news and a senior news analyst for National Public Radio, Cokie Roberts, spoke to a small group of students in the BB&T Center for Leadership Development, prior to her appearance at ECU's Legacy of Leadership event.
Because ECU’s School of Communication has a substantial amount of students majoring in her field and area of interest, a select number of communication majors were invited to hear her speak. Those students are Allison Millsaps, Joel Banjo-Johnson, Meghan Lee, Tayleigh Davis, Lindsay Brown and Joel Carter.
Roberts has won an Emmy Award and the Edward R. Murrow Award. She has covered the U.S. Congress, politics and policy for 15 years. She is the author of the national bestseller “We Are Our Mother’s Daughters” and “Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation.”
According to Dr. Linda Kean, acting director for the School of Communication, “We are honored to have Ms. Roberts come to our campus and speak with our students. This is really an amazing opportunity for our communication majors and we are so pleased our students have the chance to interact with such an accomplished professional.”
Roberts was the featured speaker at “A Legacy of Leadership: One Hundred Incredible ECU Women,” hosted by the Women’s Roundtable of ECU on Oct. 17 at the Greenville Hilton.
ECU’s School of Communication to hold annual reunion (Fall 2007)
The associate editor of North Carolina’s largest newspaper will speak at the School of Communication’s second annual CommCrew Reunion on Oct. 27.
In addition to serving as associate editor, Mary Schulken of the Charlotte Observer also sits on the newspaper’s editorial board, and writes editorials and a weekly column. Cox Newspapers named her Writer of the Year in 2000, and she has won state press awards for investigative reporting, as well as editorial, column and news feature writing. She is a two-time winner of the O’Henry Award for writing from the North Carolina Associated Press. She will speak to an audience made up primarily of East Carolina University School of Communication alumni, faculty and other CommCrew members about her experiences in the communication field. Schulken is an ECU alumna herself, having graduated in 1979 with a B.A. in English and a minor in print journalism.
"The School of Communication is thrilled to have Ms. Skulken as the keynote speaker for our reunion brunch,” said Dr. Linda Kean, the School’s acting director. “She is a great example of the success our alumni have achieved in their chosen careers. We are proud of all of our alumni and to bring them together at this event—with friends, faculty and students—is very exciting for us."
This year’s reunion will be in the form of a Brunch in Mendenhall Student Center Great Rooms, beginning at 10:30 a.m.
CommCrew is a loose affiliation of alumni and friends who support the legancy, mission and growth of the School of Communication. In addition to East Carolina University communication alumni, area communication and media professionals are encouraged to attend the banquet. Tickets are $15 each.
To purchase banquet tickets, contact Bobbie Williams at 328-2467 or williamsbo@ecu.edu. The registration deadline is Nov. 19.
Faculty and students from Media Production to explore/document shipwreck (Fall '07)
Michael Dermody, faculty member in the School of Communication, is working in conjunction with ECU’s Program in Maritime Studies to create a short-documentary and a web site for their Fall Field School.
The field school is a final project for their Master's Candidates. Students will use the skills they’ve acquired in the program and for the first time take a leadership role on an archeological dig.
In this case, the site is a shipwreck called the Ivanhoe. The Ivanhoe went down off the coast of Kaui in Hawaii in December 1915. It has yet to be explored by scientists and the goal of the expedition is to begin the documentation process.
Dermody, along with an alumni from the Media Production program, will go as the team’s communication support staff and will shoot footage on two islands – Oahu and Kaui. Much footage will be shot underwater.
"From a communication standpoint, we’ll be applying those things that we teach in our program," Dermondy relates. "At the same time we’ll be gathering footage for the documentary of the project, we’ll be maintaining an active web site of the experience."
The participants will be shooting with High Definition cameras, digitizing footage into laptops and using Final Cut Pro to edit regular video reports. They will also maintain the web site with current photographs and blog reports from the students and crew-members.
The link to the Web site is:
http://www.ecumaritimestudies.com
School of Comm graduate directing ECU-TV and winning awards (Spring 2007)
by Heather Dinwiddie
“Tomorrow starts here” is the motto East Carolina University uses to encourage students to continue striving for their goals, and ECU alumni Bryan Edge did just that.
Edge graduated from East Carolina University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science degree in communication. He first went to junior college one year before attending ECU for three years. Currently working as the director for ECU-TV, a television station for ECU, (www.ecu.edu/ecutv),Edge recalls what first drew him into the world of media.
“I always enjoyed watching T.V. and movies as a kid and watching ‘the making of’ movies on T.V.,” said Edge.
This passion for television was what lead Edge to pursue a degree in communication.
“I was a communication major with a concentration in media production. I didn’t feel real comfortable in front of the camera but I did like the creative aspect of production,” said Edge.
In pursuing a career, students may find that one professor who will continue to encourage them even after they walk across the stage to receive their degree. For Edge, Jim Rees was that professor.
“Jim Rees taught Audio Production at ECU. He had a really cool, deep voice that was made for radio and voice-overs. When I was in class he told all of us that no one in here was going to get an A. At the end of the semester I was the only one with an A,” said Edge.
In order to pursue a dream career, students not only should aim at getting good grades but also get their name out by doing internships. Edge remembers his experience as an intern.
“While in junior college and at ECU I had two internships with T.V. stations. Not only did this help me learn new things, but it also helped me meet new people for potential job offers down the road,” said Edge.
After his years at ECU, Edge began a part-time job working for FOX 8 WGHP as a production assistant in High Point, N.C., but returned to his roots at ECU. June of this year will mark Edge’s seventh year working at ECU. Edge and his video team have also won an award for their work.
“In 2000 our video team at ECU won the Communicator Award for our production of Sexual Assault: Our Community Responds. The video is used by the Pitt County Sexual Assault Response Team,” said Edge. Edge also expressed his gratitude for this award.
“I had only been working for ECU a few months, but everybody put a lot of work into this production. We’ve won other awards since then, but because that one was my first it is always special,” said Edge.
As a former ECU student who was successful at pursuing his dream career, Edge had some advice for college students who want to be in the media production profession.
“A guy I worked with during an internship told me ‘you better love T.V. if you want to stay in it’ and he was right. . . but when you work at a T.V. station, you can learn a lot of different things too! Take serious advantage of that when doing an internship or working part-time. . . and keep looking for other jobs in T.V.! This is how you will increase your pay and your knowledge of different things,” said Edge.
School of Communication graduation recognition ceremony (Spring 2007)
About 150 graduates of the School of Communication, including the first class of master’s degree recipients, will be acknowledged at the School’s recognition ceremony on Friday, May 4, 2007, starting at 7 p.m.
The ceremony, in the Wright Auditorium, will feature keynote speaker Patrick O’Neil, Ph.D., co-founder and partner for the Mitre Agency, a full-service brand design firm based in Winston-Salem, N.C. O’Neil, who received his bachelor’s degree from ECU, has nearly 20 years of experience in corporate communication, research and marketing strategy. He holds a doctoral degree from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The ceremony will recognize the first three graduates of ECU’s Master of Arts in Communication program, which was launched in August 2006 with a focus on health communication. It is also the first recognition ceremony with participation by the Comm Crew, a new organization for alumni and other supporters of the School of Communication.
David Letterman’s former director to speak at ECU (Spring 2007)
Hal Gurnee, who is perhaps best known as the director of “Late Night with David Letterman,” will visit ECU’s campus March 21-23, 2007.
The Office of Co-Curricular Programs and Cultural Outreach, along with the School of Communication and the College of Arts and Communication, will co-sponsor an "An Evening with Hal Gurnee" on Wednesday, March 21 at 7 p.m. in Hendrix Theatre. Dr. Bernard Timberg, associate professor in the School of Communication and author of “Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Show,” will moderate a panel discussion following Gurnee’s presentation.
Gurnee has worked with many of the “greats” in television history, including Letterman, Jack Paar, Mike Douglas, David Frost and Jimmy Kimmel. He directed “Late Night with David Letterman” on NBC and then “The Late Show” on CBS, working with Letterman for a decade and a half through the mid-1990s. The director’s control room at the Ed Sullivan Theater at CBS was designed by Gurnee and is now known as the “Hal Gurnee Control Room.” Gurnee works at his own discretion on pilots and special projects for Letterman, Kimmel and others.
Says Timberg of Gurnee’s appearance, “Hal Gurnee is sui generis. I can think of no other television director who is known to a wider audience outside the television industry.”
The focus of the evening will be political comedy. As the presidential election season for 2008 starts to heat up an unprecedented two years in advance, Mr. Gurnee’s presentation brings a new and special perspective to four decades of political comedy on television. After relating his own experience of working with Jack Paar, Gurnee will narrate clips from the pilot of “That Was the Week that Was” from the early 1960s, which he directed for Hollywood producer Leland Hayward. TW3, as it was known, was one of the first successful news parody shows on television, laying the groundwork for the “faux news” of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. The evening will also explore how national news parody promotes both consensus and diversity.
The respondent panel will include Thomas Douglass, the coordinator of the Comedy Film Festival and Conference to be held at ECU in October; Eric Shouse, who worked as a professional stand-up comedian for seven years in Florida and now teaches in the School of Communication at ECU; Jody Baumgartner, co-author with Jonathan Morris of “Vote for Pedro: Film Comedy, Youth and Electoral Politics”; and Anthony Holsten, actor, director and founder of the Oops! improvisational theater group in Greenville.
The free event is in Hendrix Theatre at 7 p.m. on March 21st and is open to the public.
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2006 News
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