Our college just went through an exhaustive and exhausting curriculum review and update. We tried to balance what we do well here (journalism fundamentals) with exposure to the technology students will face when they graduate. This, as many of you know, is no easy task when you are trying to stay within the credit restrictions for ACEJMC accreditation. We require all students to take a boot camp-style reporting class that is the gateway to all our other courses. After that, the students pick a concentration in print (newspapers/magazines), broadcast (TV/radio) or online. There is a sequence of courses for each tract. In addition, everyone takes ethics, media law, advanced electives and journalism research. We also require everyone to take an internship in their concentration for credit. (I teach that class. So all 500 undergraduates must darken my door at some point if they want to graduate.) Because online media has been an option, not a requirement, we made two key changes to our curriculum last spring. (We are working to get them on the books by next fall). Everyone must take a multimedia class that teaches video, audio and digital photography as well as a capstone course that will encourage creativity and innovation. The multimedia course exists now but is an elective. The capstone, still being designed, will require students to work in teams to create a media product. For example, that product can be a Web site or a news product (such as a documentary or series of stories.) We kept most of our other course offerings in place to do this, although there was a lot of discussion of merging or eliminating courses.
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Penny Bender Fuchs
Philip Merrill College of Journalism
University of Maryland
1117 Journalism Bldg.
College Park, MD 20742
301-405-2796
