Teaching

61-141 Introduction to Journalism and Mass Communication (Lim)
In this class, we addressed diversity, such as thought, race or culture, as part of the regular material. We watched The Shadow of Hate: A History of Intolerance in America. The Oscar-nominated film for short documentary traces the history of racial, religious, and social intolerance in the United States. The film uses case studies from memoirs, eyewitness accounts, archival photographs and documents. My students, many for the first time, learned how American society discriminated against Jews, African-Americans, Chinese, Irish, Native Americans, and Baptists in the United States. We then had a powerful discussion about how intolerance is alive and well in the U.S. and how we have to continually fight it. Also this semester, we watched Still Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Woman, a documentary that depicts the harmful effects of stereotypical and sexist images in advertising. I then asked the students to bring in examples of print ads with women in them. Although the assignment was voluntary and had no bearing on their grades, students brought in more than 50 examples, which I shared via PowerPoint. They said they were horrified and embarrassed by many of the ads, and that the exercise had taught them to look at ads in a different light.

61-239 Media Photo I (Gleason)
The class textbook addresses photographing other cultures and I make sure to include people of color when they look at examples of portraiture. One portrait we look at is a cover image for Yolk, a magazine by and for Asian-American men that closed shop in 2003, which was pretty hip and trendy. I discuss why the publishers chose that name and what the visual representation of a yolk is and how that reflects what the publishers felt about being Asian in a predominantly white society. I show and discuss this portrait among others every semester.

61-250 Principles of Advertising (Tsao)
Students were assigned to study market profile of three ethnic groups, African, Asian, and Hispanic Americans and develop an integrative advertising campaign for the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh to reach one of the three ethnic markets. The project includes two components. One is research on ethnic markets, followed by the strategic development according to research findings. Primary research methods as well as secondary research are required to complete the assignment.

61-315 Public Relations Techniques (Henderson)
During the fall semester, the public relations techniques class created public relations plans and tactics for the African American Studies minor on campus. The contact was Dr. Norlisha Crawford, the director of the program. She and I also submitted a proposal to make a presentation at the upcoming 2007 Diversity Leadership Conference on campus, "Becoming a DIVERSE CITY" set for Feb. 10.

61-339 Media Photo II (Gleason)
Students looked at the work of a diverse group of photographers including Gordon Parks (African-American male), Mariko Mori (Japanese female), Cindy Sherman (postmodern feminist female), David LaChapelle (gay American male), and Manuel Alvarez Bravo (Mexican male).

61-327 Reporting (Maguire)
In Reporting, students were given an assignment called "Six Degrees of Separation," in which they were challenged to profile someone who was different from them in at least six respects. These respects could be such things as race, gender, age, political orientation, sexual orientation, religion, physical condition, nationality, income, interests and housing. In part because of the way that we focused on gathering information and making observations about profile subjects, the students did some of their best work of the semester on this assignment.

61-351 Advertising Copy, Layout and Production (Two sessions taught by Benish and Baumgart respectively)
In both sections of the Ad, Copy, Layout and Production course, a guerilla advertising assignment was given to the students to challenge them to think diversely. The creative brief asked the students to create a guerilla advertising tactic that would increase awareness around why placing children in booster seats could save their lives. The target audience chosen was Wisconsin Hmong-American parents who have children, aged five through eight. The tactic was to be placed during the New Year Festival, where several Hmong families gather to celebrate the harvest season.

The reason the target was chosen is because Hmong-American parents have been slow to adopt the laws requiring their children to be placed in safety belts. Guerilla advertising was chosen for this target market because traditional advertising channels have not reached this group effectively.

The assignment was also timely. In June 2006, Wisconsin issued a new child safety seat law requiring kids to be in a booster seat until they reach age 8. The 6-month grace period ends Dec. 31, 2006, and citations may be issued starting in January. Thomas Xiong, UW Oshkosh admissions officer, and Lisa Voss, a representative from Fox Valley Safe Kids, provided creative suggestions to the student campaign.

61-353 Advertising Media (Tsao)
A student group was assigned to study the Web site of Census Bureau that provides an access to the data of racial and ethnic populations in the United States. The finding was included in a PowerPoint document presented to the class.

61-371 History of Journalism in the U.S. (Cowling)
During fall semester 2006, I gave a diversity assignment for students in the History of Journalism in the United States class. In the assignment, students wrote a paper examining and analyzing the historical development of either diversity in the media workplace or the historical development of minority media publications, or an in-depth look and analysis of a minority journalist who made a significant contribution to the field. The "minority" in this case could be a racial minority or a woman, since historically women were slow to be allowed as members of the working press. Most of the papers, however, did involve noted minority journalists, mostly African-American. Below are some suggestions that I offered to get students thinking about a topic:

• Diversity in the newsroom or workplace changed since the early days of the press, either by race and/or by gender?
• Well-known journalists who fought for diversity, particularly in abolitionist efforts on slavery or perhaps voting rights for women.
• The minority media, from early black or other minority newspapers to specialty publications like magazines.
• Women in the media, one in particular or a movement that had an impact on journalism.
• Special training programs, internships developed for minority journalists.
• Minority journalist organizations, like those to represent and assist Asian-Americans, Latinos, African-Americans and Native Americans.
• Use of stereotypes in journalism, and how it has changed, or if more needs to be done to eliminate it from writing and photography.

61-413 Feature Writing (Lim)
In the Feature Writing class, we watched a film called “The Hobart Shakespeareans,” a documentary about a fifth-grade class in inner-city Los Angeles. In this particular class, none of the students spoke English as his or her home language. But these students, many of whom have been written off by former teachers as a lost cause, perform Hamlet internationally. I use this award-winning documentary to show my students that even though society often puts labels on people, we as journalists need to disregard such labels. Also I challenged my students to come up with story ideas that take them outside of their comfort zone. They came up with stories about how the government is failing its psychologically-damaged Iraq War veterans; how a hearing-impaired student copes in a hearing world; and what it is like to be black in a lily-white university.

61-472 Research in Strategic Communication (Tsao)
Students studied ethnic groups in terms of demographics, psychographics, and behavioristics applying methods of secondary research and syndicated sources such as Prizm and SIMMONS. Research findings were compiled and presented to the teaching team who will be supervising the National Student Advertising Competition project in spring 2007.

Other activities

Speaker Series on Minorities and Women in Journalism
To celebrate liberal arts, the Journalism Department, African-American Studies, and UWO Women’s Center co-sponsored the Speaker Series on Minorities and Women in Journalism. The speaker in the series of fall 2006 was Dr. K. E. Supriya presenting, “Changing the Channel: Globalizing Diversity in Media Studies.” The speech was held on Oct. 12, Thursday, 9:40-11:10 a.m. in Ballroom A, Reeve Union. Dr. Supriya is an associate professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She teaches and researches in the areas of global media and cultural identity.

Guest speakers invited to visit journalism classes
In fall 2006, approximately 23 professionals and one scholar visited or teleconferenced journalism classes. Fifteen of the speakers (63% of 24) were females, while two of them represent ethnic groups.

Field trip to Chicago organized by Tim Gleason and Grace Lim
On Oct. 20, 2006, Dr. Tim Gleason and Grace Lim accompanied 34 students to Chicago on a day trip. Lim took 32 students to Midwest bureau of People magazine, where they learned the ins and outs of celebrity journalism from the bureau chief and staff correspondents. Then Lim and 14 students hopped on a train to Chinatown where they ate a dim sum lunch and joined a walking tour of the area. Some students have not ventured outside the Fox Valley before and were slightly overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of the big city. After running and barely making one train, one student finally sat down and said, "I don't know how people do this every day."

34 students went on the trip.
32 went to People.

The folks at People were:
Midwest Bureau Chief Cindy Dampier
Staff Corrrespondent Lauren Comander
Staff Correspondent Kelly Williams
Staff Correspondent Barbara Sandler

Photo Club Adviser Dr. Gleason and Photo Club President Sara Gomach conducted a photographic scouting trip in the hope of establishing the trip as an annual event for club members and journalism students. The Chicago trip was originally developed from photo class and club discussions. Dr. Gleason used photos from the trip to show the Media Photography II class how to pair images together.

Dr. Gleason would like to thank Ms. Lim for all her hard work in recruiting students and the tours she provided them. Without her recruiting efforts, the department would not have been able to offer the trip. We hope this will become an annual fall event.

Faculty publication
Barb Benish wrote a story about a diversity activity of Herzing College at Madison that was published in Career Education Review. The story is summarized below.

Herzing College-Madison holds a Diversity Institute on Wheels on Martin Luther King Day. All staff members board a bus and go out into the community where they talk to minority businessmen and women, community leaders, etc. They learn issues facing the community, and meet potential contacts for speakers, internships, etc. It is mandatory for staff to attend. In addition, the Institute hope:

• To help educate and prepare future minority leaders
• To work with existing minority leaders to better understand the issues and needs in the community
• To embrace diversity as an institution as one way to prepare white students for work later in the real world
• To help the faculty encourage respect for gender and racial differences.