Western professor Brian J. Bowe took over Western’s journalism department chair position this fall. When expressing his desire to be chair, Bowe told his colleagues that he wanted to adopt the motto, “let’s succeed together.”
Apples, granola bars, Minute Rice, check. Menstrual pads, diapers, hand sanitizer, check. Together, journalism professor Betsy O’Donovan and I weaved through the Winco aisles as we crossed items off O’Donovan’s mental list of items to buy for the journalism department food pantry during winter quarter. The pantry, funded and routinely stocked by Western Washington University journalism faculty, was running low, and it was time for a refill.
From Jennifer Keller:
After 18 months of fully remote teaching, some courses returned to face-to-face in fall, and more in spring. It’s still a work in progress, but it is nice to be in a classroom again and see our students in person. Obviously, we continue to adapt in order to assist all our students, but it finally feels like we are seeing progress toward something more “normal.”
Although Western saw a drop in enrollment in the freshman class of 2020-2021, along with most colleges and universities, we saw an increase in students this year. The journalism department was impacted, but not nearly as much as some others.
Following the infamous 2020, this year is full of new beginnings, including the rebranding of The Western Front. Before the newspaper became The Western Front in 1967, it was called the Straight News, the Collegian, The Normal Messenger and the Northwester Viking. Now, it is called The Front, and its staff is focusing on a digital-first presence.
Careful consideration of these changes was made by editors for years, but this quarter, The Front is launching an updated website and logo, new social media strategies and a new weekly podcast.
Campus is desolate besides a few students meandering around. It is late February and cold, but sunny nonetheless. I see Professor Joan Connell, my advisor for Klipsun magazine, sitting cross-legged outside the Communications Facility Building. She is so quaint.
Joan is wearing a black beret, a scarf, tights and an N95 mask. She looks dressed for an occasion. I do not.
I see a man hold his phone over his head to photograph one of the construction sites on campus. Assuming it’s Scott Terrell, I head his way. It’s freezing, and feels like it’ll snow. Scott is wearing a funny-looking black fleece hat and a fabric mask with apples on it.
Two years ago, Scott taught my photojournalism class, but since then, we’ve only seen each other sparingly in the hallways. Now, when he glances over, he looks like he has no clue who I am. As I approach him, he says he didn’t recognize me with my mask.
I remember being the 17th person on the waitlist for J207, Newswriting, the primary prerequisite for all journalism classes at Western Washington University. After taking a gap year between high school and college, I was doing everything I could to speed up my graduation process. If I didn’t get into this class, it would change my entire course schedule.
Checking waitlists on Web4U is a frustrating process, but I was doing it every chance I got: in between classes, on my work break, even as I bumped shoulders with a peer on the jam-packed bus.
From Jennifer Keller:
Well, what a long strange trip 2020 has been for us all.
Some of you may have noticed that our alumni newsletter site was not updated last spring. This is through no fault of Stella Harvey – our student editor and now alumna – and her crew who worked to collect and write stories, edit them, get everything designed to go live. Rather, just as we were doing final reviews – the world changed. Suddenly, faculty and students had about two weeks to prepare for an entirely remote spring quarter. Then summer. Then fall. As each new quarter approached we planned for both in-person and remote teaching and held our breath.
From Jennifer Keller:
Once again, we are seeing an increase in the number of majors/pre-majors for our department. Even as other universities are seeing a decline in enrollment, Western is not – nor is the journalism department. As we begin the 2019-2020 academic year, we have 275 majors and pre-majors and 43 minors. The latest numbers place 98 in the public relations track, 92 in the visual journalism and 85 in the news-editorial track. These numbers represent an increase in each one of our tracks, and an overall increase of approximately 10 percent.
If you find yourself in need of some administrative assistance one of these days, you’ll likely be connected to Jenny Bettis, the journalism departments new department manager. Bettis joined the journalism department in October after her family was caught in the middle of the Paradise Camp Fire in California in 2018.
“We were living right next to Paradise, where the Paradise fire happened, our landlord wanted to sell the house so, [with my husband’s family here] this was just a safe landing place for us.”