Never doubt the Communication major

At Communication Appreciation Day, graduates working everywhere from Grand Forks to New York City sing praises of their UND Communication degree

A tried-and-true piece of advice for communicators in all media is the following: “Show, don’t tell.”

And on Saturday, the UND Communication Department took that advice to heart by showing, rather than telling listeners about, the value of a Communication degree.

“My career would not have been possible if it had not been for my experience at UND,” said UND Communication grad Peter Bottini, who now works in midtown Manhattan as Social Media Marketing Director for the National Hockey League.

“I really came to life when I arrived at UND in 2009.” And since then, “I’ve made the most of my classes and I’ve made the most of my connections,” doing work that every day calls upon the skills he learned at UND, Bottini said.

Emily Zangari, also a UND Communication grad and currently Director of Digital Content and Strategy at the University of Connecticut, agreed. “I couldn’t have asked for a better experience at UND,” Zangari said.

“And it really set me up for success, with the skills that I learned and connections I made. I can’t say enough about it.”

Communication Appreciation Day

Bottini and Zangari were just two of 18 UND Communication alums who spoke on Saturday at a special afternoon-long event. Communication Appreciation Day, sponsored by the UND Communication Department, featured a series of 40-minute Zoom sessions with graduates in six different industries: Journalism; Event Planning, Marketing & Sales; Health Communication; Advertising & Public Relations; Social Media Advertising & Management; and Sports Communication.

In each session, the graduates took turns describing their work and how they’d been helped in their careers by their UND Communication degree. The consensus: “At the UND Communication Department, you get hands-on experience with advertising, public relations, journalism, social media and other skills,” said Emily Hanson, who graduated from UND last year but already is director of marketing at the Alerus Center in Grand Forks.

That means graduates are able to show up at job interviews with not just resumes, but portfolios full of creative accomplishments. That gave Hanson, for one, an advantage when applying for marketing work, even though other applicants had marketing degrees: “With the experience I had gained within the Communication Department, my employer was impressed. It’s unreal,” she said.

Communication Appreciation Day got its start when research came back about students and prospective students’ lack of knowledge about the Communication major. “Everyone thought the Communication major is just about writing and public speaking, when in fact, it provides a lot of opportunities for students,” said Joonghwa Lee, assistant professor of communication.

Moreover, another gap in students’ connections with and awareness of Communication alumni also was identified. Communication Appreciation Day is the department’s way of tackling both issues head-on.

A planning and logistics challenge

Starting in the fall, three UND Communication students, under Lee’s supervision, began planning Saturday’s event. “It was a lot more work than I thought it would be,” said Nicole Rothenberger, one of the three planners and a UND triple major – in Communication, International Studies and Honors – who’s graduating in May.

That’s especially true because the students handled all the recruiting, all the scheduling, all the social media and all of the advertising for the event, among many other tasks.

“But I found myself really liking and enjoying it. And I learned a lot that I can use, professionally, through this experience … In a real way, preparing the event involved journalism, event planning, public relations, social media and almost all of the other industry-categories that we arranged. I really used every single skill that I’ve learned over my past four years in the Communication Department.”

That same theme of their UND coursework’s practical value surfaced over and over again during the discussions on Saturday.

At UND, Lisa Martinez took Intro to Media Writing, Principles of Public Relations, Media Planning for Advertising and Fundamentals of Graphic Design classes, among others, she said. She used all of those on Day 1 of her first job as a United Way staff member in Grand Forks, and continues to do so in her current position as Marketing Coordinator at UND.

“The United Way was a small office – only four people at that time – and they were looking for someone who was willing and able to wear lots of different hats,” Martinez said.

“I said, ‘That’s me,’ and I told them I’d be fine working in a lot of different roles.” Her Communication major and liberal-arts foundation had prepared her for a variety of duties, she said.

Skill set for multiple jobs

Amber Bunyea feels the same, even though she completed her UND degree and Communication major 100 percent online. “I’m so thankful that I found UND, because they really equipped me with the skill set that I needed to go out into the job market,” said Bunyea, Business Development and Quality Management executive at AI Signal Research, a Huntsville, Ala.-based Department of Defense contractor.

Saturday’s event was technically demanding, in that it involved recruiting 18 busy alumni from around the country, lining them up to appear on time and on Zoom with their proper panel, then making sure each grad kept within his or her allotted time while speaking.

Nevertheless, the five-hour long series of discussions proceeded smoothly and came off without a hitch. That was no accident:

“We had rehearsals before the event,” Lee said. “We had contingency plans in place. And during the event, the student hosts and I kept communicating; we had cell phones in our hands, so we could text back and forth.”

Moreover, the advertising and marketing that the students had accomplished beforehand also paid off, in that each panel attracted dozens of viewers – including people from overseas.

“I hadn’t expected this, but we had international participants, too – from Somalia, Nigeria and even Turkey,” Lee added. “So I was like, ‘Wow, that’s tremendous.’”

The Communication family

Throughout the afternoon, panelists also shared stories about their jobs. For example, Se Kwon described the routine of the 2 a.m.-to-10-a.m. shift she works as a reporter for WDAY-TV in Fargo, and Riley Hallaway, video journalist with Forbes in New York City, talked about the challenge of reporting on illegal poaching in South Africa.

All that, plus $1,000 scholarships for some lucky high-school students who tuned in to the Zoomcast and plan to attend UND, too.

“Helping to plan this event was one of the most valuable things I’ve done at UND, because of the experience I’ve gained and all the good advice that the alumni shared,” Rothenberger said.

“I’m about to graduate, but I feel more optimistic than anything else, because I’m heading into a world where a lot of things are digital. And that’s one of the highlights of the Communication Department, because it really teaches us how to work online and through all of these new media and digital platforms.”

Communication Appreciation Day not only reinforced that message, but also gave students and prospective students 18 role models to look up to (and network with, as each alum invited students to do).

Said Lee, “I believe one of the most important things is for students to have confidence in their major.” Mission accomplished, which means the planning for next year’s Communication Appreciation Day already has begun.