Experiential Learning
Hands-on learning doesn’t always happen out in the field. When the SOJC experience got flipped on its head this year, living rooms turned into lecture halls, and students found digital ways to engage in real-world work. They honed their craft with virtual faculty guidance, in socially distanced labs in Allen Hall and the Oregon Reality Lab, and via remote internships. As wildfires and protests ignited across the state, some even donned masks and plunged into the thick of things, gaining once-in-a-lifetime field experience.
This year’s Snowden interns faced a summer like no other. From ongoing protests in Portland to rising concerns about domestic and child abuse during the pandemic, our interns did their fair share of ethical reporting. The Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism has funded more than 250 internships since 1998.
Long before the summer protests erupted, Jasmine Jackson ’20 was reporting about race, equity, and inclusion on campus. In her youth, she yearned to see her community properly reflected in the news and on TV. As an SOJC journalism student, she realized she had a passion for videography and the talent for storytelling to help make that happen. The director of powerful video projects like “Ethnic Hair Day at UO” and “Home for the Black and Educated,” Jackson created her most recent video, “Last Stop in the Barber Shop,” during a Snowden multimedia internship with Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Science can measure the effects of climate change, but it’s the stories about how people and places are adapting that have the power to move audiences. From 2014 through 2019, students in the SOJC’s unique Science & Memory program have traveled the world, from the Oregon Coast and Alaska to Ghana and Hawaii, to tell the complex stories of climate change. Their efforts have emphasized the importance of science communication, strategic understanding of audience, and the beauty of well-crafted work.
During the social isolation brought on by COVID-19, virtual reality offered a way to escape beyond our four walls. Forward-thinking faculty at SOJC Portland knew this innovative technology would be the media of the future. For the past two years, students in the Oregon Reality (OR) Lab have been experimenting with different realities—augmented, extended, and virtual—and exploring the potential of ethical immersive media as a communication and problem-solving tool.
The client: UO Athletic Department. The objective: Boost ticket sales for women’s basketball games. The campaign: Witness the Wonder. Allen Hall Advertising’s sophisticated pitch for a women’s basketball brand uplift won the student ad agency a $74,000 account and an unparalleled real-world experience. Their work was featured on banners and buses all over campus and beyond.
When the pandemic unleashed a deluge of emails from corporate brands about the coronavirus, advertising and brand responsibility (ABR) master’s student Adam Spencer ’20 noticed there was a fine line between informing customers and exploiting consumer anxiety. His class conducted consumer surveys on COVID-related brand communication and used the results to develop a guide for responsible messaging during the pandemic.
Everyone in the UO universe knows about Sabrina Ionescu’s history-making star turn on the Women’s Basketball Team. But did you know she’s also a recent graduate of the SOJC’s one-of-a-kind advertising and brand responsibility master’s program? While earning the title of GOAT on the court this year, Sabrina was banking on her future by learning how to be a responsible brand ambassador for herself.
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See the world through the eyes of SOJC students as they chronicle their journeys to far-flung places around the globe, network with top professionals in the industry, and share their most impactful fieldwork.
As mass shootings shake the nation from coast to coast, sporting goods stores in America have faced a difficult dilemma: Should they continue to sell guns to the general public? Following the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in 2018, Dick’s Sporting Goods decided to halt gun sales in all 125 of its locations. Three strategic communication master’s students investigated the company’s communication choices in a case study that won the national Jack Koten Page Principles Case Study Award from the Arthur Page Society.