As we begin the 2018-19 academic year, we have 251 majors and pre-majors, another increase. The latest numbers place 96 in the public relations track, 78 in the news-editorial track and 73 in the visual journalism track. We also have 86 minors, with 57 choosing the PR minor and another 29 choosing the news-editorial minor. These numbers represent an increase of more than 10 percent over last year and we expect that trend to continue.

There are so many exciting things going on in our department. Brian J. Bowe, Carolyn Nielsen and Joe Gosen secured a state department grant linking Western with a program in Tunisia and they will take six students to Tunisia this fall. Dr. Bowe is also in Jordan right now on a Fulbright. Several of our faculty members, including Peggy Watt, Derek Moscato and Brian Bowe, have taught or are teaching courses in the honors program. You can read about these and many more of their successes in the faculty updates.

Probably the most exciting news, in my opinion, is the arrival of our newest faculty member – Betsy O’Donovan. She brings a wide variety of experience from reporting at weekly papers to working with students advising the Daily Tarheel in North Carolina to working with NPR on Storycorps. I heard nothing but raves from the students who took her feature writing and newswriting courses this fall. This quarter she has jumped right in to editing and advanced reporting. We are very lucky to have her as a colleague.

Last year, our students devoted nearly 20,000 hours of community service through internships and service-learning projects in courses such as Advanced Reporting, Advanced VJ, PR Campaigns and Advanced PR Writing. Students had a wide variety of internships from magazines (such as Alaska Airlines, SIP and Snowboarder) to newspapers (including Seattle Times, LaConner News and Anacortes American) to film and video (Vogt Documentaries and Talking To Crows) to PR internships (Seattle Opera and Richmond PR to name a couple). This fall, one of our news-ed students spent the quarter interning at Redskins.com in Washington, D.C., getting to interview players, write blogs and introduce new material to the site. Our students also continue to be sought out for jobs after graduation with several opportunities arising from these internships. Journalism continues to be one of the top departments in terms of percent of graduates working in the field they majored in.

This year, Western’s publications were also honored by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) again. Our students were also recognized in the regional Mark of Excellence competition sponsored by the SPJ with nine finalists. This included winners in two categories. First, Erasmus Baxter and Alexis Edgar won for in-depth reporting with their story on rental inspections and landlord issues. Jesse Nichols and Kjell Redal were not only regional but national winners in online/digital feature videography for their Troubled Waters piece.

Our students continue to amaze us beyond the publications. Zoe Deal was selected for the EIJ News team covering Excellence in Journalism at the Society of Professional Journalists’ national conference in Baltimore in September. Asia Fields was awarded the Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award for her Senior Seminar paper, “Media Coverage of Transgender People Through Danica Roem’s Election Coverage.” In addition, nearly a dozen of our students were recognized during Western’s Scholars Week poster presentations.

As always, don’t forget to like the WWU Journalism Alumni page on Facebook to share information and hear more about what’s going on in the department. This includes any job openings we may hear about.

Jennifer Keller