Communication Appreciation Day at 101
Poster presentations, new ways of connecting students with working professionals mark this year’s celebration
The annual Communication Appreciation Day event brought a few new twists to students and alumni of a department that is now 101 years old.
The celebratory event was held on Thursday, April 24, in the Memorial Union Ballroom, and featured all the usual activities — student poster presentations, a networking and scholarship award ceremony, and of course the long-running Hagerty Lecture. (The lecture is named after the late Jack Hagerty, who was a longtime editor at the Grand Forks Herald.)
But this year’s celebration tossed in a few new things, including a way to connect students with different working communication professionals so they can offer advice on potential career paths.
“We have lot of events packed into this afternoon, and we’re very excited,” said Soojung Kim, chair of the Communication Department.
Kicking things off was Bradley Rundquist, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, who gave introductory remarks. Rundquist, who started his career as a newspaper reporter and editor, extolled the virtues of an education in the wide field of Communication, due in no small part to how useful the knowledge and skills learned in that study can be in many different jobs.
“Not a minute of my time was wasted learning about communication, communication theory and journalism,” he said. “I use that knowledge and those skills every day in my current job, and I used them through grad school and in other jobs that I have had.
“In fact, I think that’s what’s enabled me to be flexible, when there was some opportunity to change direction in my career.”
Following those remarks, the event continued with the Hagerty Lecture, this year presented by Mike Burbach, who has been the editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press since 2011.
(Editor’s note: In the story Lessons from life in the journalism trenches, UND Today recapped Burbach’s talk.)
Throughout the day, students, parents and UND alumni were able to speak with Communication students about their ongoing research projects. More than 20 poster stands were set up in the Ballroom on Thursday, with students standing by to discuss their work.
Attendees on Thursday might have listened to Laura Sorenson, a junior who is minoring in the newly offered Journalism program, who spoke about her project “Lasting Legacy: Hyslop Sports Center Bids Farewell.”
“I had a lot of fun researching this,” she said. “I actually went through old Dakota Student newspaper articles to find a lot of the information on the history.”
And this year, two of those poster presentations were commissioned by the UND LEADS Implementation Committee. Members of the committee asked for the new research projects to help students not only learn about UND’s strategic plan, but how to see themselves in it.
One student group is working on a podcast and a student newsletter, and the other is focusing on creating an informational event (maybe even with a few goodies such as free food to help drive attendance) as well as a social media page. The ongoing projects are being carried out by students in the Communication 499 class.
“The students are coming up with real content; they are doing a lot of cool, hands-on work,” said Emily Gibbens-Buteau, assistant professor of Communication, about the projects.
To that end, students in the class listened to several speakers, including Meloney Linder, UND’s vice president of Marketing & Communications, and David Dodds, director of Communication, as to how to best reach out to the student population.
“We’re trying to reach students and make sure that they understand what UND LEADS is,” said Madison Dame, a member of that class, who also interned with UND Today.
One of the celebration’s new events, and one that will continue to take place going forward, was the Communication Career Roundtable. This event brought in Communication alumni to sit at different tables, in a sort of “speed dating” type event, to help students understand what working is like in a variety of different careers.
One of those alumni was Delaney Otto, a class of ’22 graduate who is now a reporter at the Grand Forks Herald. Otto said she was happy to talk to students, especially with the Journalism degree having returned to UND.
“I said, ‘Yeah, if I can get more people interested in (journalism),” Otto told UND Today, when she was asked to sit in on the roundtable. She added that longtime journalist and UND lecturer Chuck Haga, ’76, ’78, is the person initially sparked her interested in the profession.
In an update about the Journalism program, Kim said she was impressed by the momentum she is seeing, as the program now has 20 majors enrolled with 15 minors.
“I think that’s a pretty significant number of students,” said Kim.
The day finished with a networking event and scholarship ceremony. About 30 students received a total of more than $40,000 in scholarship funding. In his introductory remarks, Dean Rundquist made sure to thank all the donors who supported the department, and the networking event then put students in direct contact with some of those donors.
Soojung Kim agreed.
“We’re very grateful for the number of scholarship opportunities that we can offer,” Kim said.
