Message from the Chair A word from Department Chair 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. Our numbers are down only about 10 percent – meaning we still have about 300 majors, pre-majors and minors. It is also encouraging to see that there are more than 100 students who have a declared interest in journalism.

One major change is that the students voted to change the name of the newspaper from The Western Front to The Front. The decision was made for two reasons – one, to distance itself from the Western Front in WWII, which often showed up on social media or web searches. Second, to establish a name that reflects the paper as a resource beyond Western – a community newspaper. If you want to learn more, here’s what The Front itself had to say: https://www.westernfrontonline.com/article/2021/06/the-front-welcome?fbclid=IwAR1ocv1XHkEawjaHgrkRtW8KkXis8wc-OfNE1sonXHs-X8UsklSIsjtH8eI.

A big thank you to all of our alumni who continue to support our current students – through classroom visits (via Zoom and in person), informational interviews, mentoring, internships, donations and more. I know it means a lot to our students to hear from you and learn more about their potential careers once they graduate.  

I hope you are all staying safe and healthy. We hope that after a two year hiatus, we’ll be able to hold our annual department picnic again this spring – and encourage alumni to join us if we do. It’s always a joy to catch up with everyone, hand out awards and scholarships to current students, and celebrate the end of another year.

Thank you all for everything you do.

—Jennifer Keller