Media Studies prepares students for many fields

With its first majors graduated and holding down jobs in a wide variety of places — MTV, “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and Good Housekeeping, for example — the Media Studies program is flourishing, according to Johanna Drucker, its first director.

“The program is demonstrating its success by the way these students are able to find these positions,” she said.

But Drucker added that media studies, which accepted its first majors in fall 2000, is by no means a professional track. “It prepares students to write, do research, make an argument, speak credibly, and it creates a sense of ethics,” she said. Even so, majors do tend to be looking for a foundation for a media career in all its aspects — film, television, advertising, communications, public relations, print, production, design and the financial side of the business, Drucker said.

“We don’t have more than two students who want the same thing at any given time. It's really all over the map,” she explained.

A new alumni and professionals network shares expertise in formal and informal conversations and to support the program in other ways. A first Hoos in Media forum in New York City over spring break drew alumni and current majors alike.

Majors have landed internships in top-ranked national media companies including CNN, Turner, Disney, CBS, NBC and The Washington Post in addition to local and regional media firms.