Dafna Lemish
Master of Arts
Master of Science
Doctor of Philosophy |
My name is Victoria Carter. I'm from Chicago, Illinois. I'm a M.S. student in the Professional Media and Media Management program with a concentration in documentary media.
When I came here, I was just visiting Carbondale. I really hadn't thought too much about grad school. But I loved how nice the people were and how they were willing to help me out in trying to figure out the process of grad school, as well as the school has so many resources and you have so much access to all kinds of equipment, all kinds of editing software.
Everything is at your disposal so you can be as creative as you want to be. I specifically work in documentary, so currently my master's final project is on black women and hip hop-- where we exist and how our sexuality is used.
The "Documentary for Broadcast" class was my favorite class because I was able to be a part of a team and to really follow the process of creating a documentary for television from beginning to end. It wasn't just me creating a student project. It was really something for my professional career.
I was one of the TA's for an intro to production course for Radio & Television and I loved it! I never thought that I would love teaching, but it was such a great opportunity to do for 2 years to help teach these undergraduate students about my field. It was a great opportunity to talk about audio production, film production, studio production and what it means to create a story. I really felt like I was giving back.
Recently, I've been submitting edits of my documentary on black women in hip hop. It's called "Auction Block Sexuality," and I've submitted it to 2 film festivals and one of them I just heard back a couple weeks ago that I won 3rd place! It was at Eastern Illinois University and I won 3rd place. It was pretty cool.
I socialize with everyone in the department. I think what's cool about MCMA in general is that we're all kind of interconnected. It's really cool for brainstorming so when I'm trying to get ideas. I have people that I can go to that are working in different facets of the field.
When I get out of here, I would like to work in television for a while, and progressively in film and obtain the business aspects that I would like from those companies and then go out and start on my own.
The really cool thing about the M.S. program is that it gives you so many options. You don't have to specifically just concentrate in documentary, you can into advertising, photography, whatever you want to do and it gives you a business spin on whatever you've chosen to do.
And that's really cool because very rarely do you see programs that allow you to have this simultaneous experience where you're creating media and you're getting a new perspective on how to become a better professional.
Master of Arts
Master of Science
Doctor of Philosophy |
My name is Rob Craig. I'm from Marion, Illinois and I'm an M.S. student in Professional Media and Media Management studies, with a focus on new media.
Through the M.S. program, my current interests are focused on the video game industry as an emerging media and as a large segment of new media, and a very important financial segment of media overall.
So my focus and my interests right now are on learning about the gaming industry both from a production position but also from a global media and distribution perspective. I bring to the table a number of years where I've worked as a historian, a collector and restorer of coin-operated gaming equipment.
Already, I've had opportunities to write articles for a magazine, where I'm a monthly columnist. I've given presentations at an annual festival. But what has happened here in this program is it's actually polished my presentation skills, polished my ability to write academically, from a research perspective.
It's encouraged me to go an extra mile to make sure that I understand fully what it is that I'm evaluating. As an SIU employee, I get the opportunity to expand my education for free. What I wanted to do was seek out a program, a master's program that was exciting and would give me lots of opportunities to learn new things--emerging technologies.
When I came across the M.S. program here in Mass Communications I became very excited about opportunities to learn not only new production methods and software and technology, but also to learn about the media distribution cycle, both here domestically and globally.
There was a class that I had with Professor Todd Herreman called Professional Recording Enginneering. That was a very exciting course that offered me not only an opportunity to work with someone in
Professor Herreman who has industry experience and has worked with celebrity talent, but also to learn the tools that they use currently in the industry.
There's a group here on campus called CATS-- Computer Arts and Technology Society. What it does is it reaches out to talented individuals who have an interest in computer arts or other types of technology, all across the university.
Having been a part of this club on campus this year, it was really a unique opportunity to learn the skills and talents of other people not just in this college but in other colleges on campus.
And then to reach out to those folks who maybe are working on a really interesting project to try to offer maybe some skills and talents that I have that they don't or to request skills or talents that I don't have.
The gaming industry is growing. It's eclipsed the revenue by Hollywood's silver screen--the box office-- for many years now, and so it's important for SIU to be competitive.
So my goal is to really gain a large understanding of the gaming industry in the context of this college so that I can bring to the table some skills and talents and a plan for the university to enter the gaming education business.
I'm Cary Bryant. I'm from Centralia, Illinois and I'm an alumni from SIUC's School of Journalism.
Currently, right now I'm a first-year grad student in the College of Mass Communication and my focus is MS - Professional Media Management with an emphasis in New Media and Social Media.
In my undergrad, I did Journalism Digital Communication.
When I came into the program there were not very many students going into it and I was really interested in doing web design and doing online journalism and writing for a newspaper.
I got into web design, graphic design, shooting video, shooting photos, pretty much becoming a well-rounded multimedia producer for a newspaper.
When newspapers hire reporters these days, they want them to do it all. They want them to shoot video and take photos, and be able to write a great story.
Probably the most beneficial class that got me on to the track of being in my future career was MCMA 396. It was offered through Journalism professor Anita Stoner and it taught you the basics of web design and writing for online journalism.
The summer before I graduated from SIU with my undergrad I was currently working on the Shawnee Forest Project through the School of Journalism. It was a project that sent students out in to the Shawnee Forest to get stories and video and photos of how beautiful the forest is. It was great for me to get into the project. I helped design the website and maintain it and get students to work together to get stuff to put on this website and also the book.
For my final undergrad project before I could graduate, I redesigned the School of Journalism website, and it was great to learn more about each specialization and work with students from each area to get enough content for the web site that would make it more beneficial and attractive to future students.
Currently, I'm a webmaster for the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute on campus. We're a non-profit organization that brings speakers to campus and work on important issues in the community and at the state level.
I believe my undergrad degree here provided such a great stepping stone to go for my master's.
I came into the program fully advanced, I actually didn't have to take some classes because I was so proficient to go past the basic classes.
When I finish with my master's from SIU, I plan to go on and either start my own online graphics company and web design company or I plan to work in media relations.
Social media is becoming very popular with companies now and I would love to handle that for a local company or somewhere in Illinois.
My name is Adam Davis. I'm originally from Salt Lake City, Utah and I'm a PhD student.
For my area of study, I decided to mix new media and cinema. My background is in cinema but I found opportunities here to study new media and certainly it's one of the frontiers where research is going and so I decided to try to put the two together, looking both at cinematic elements in virtual worlds--I study Second Life in particular--and also avatars in film.
When I was deciding what school to attend I received several phone calls and emails from different faculty. I had the opportunity to talk with some of them and even come out here and meet a few of them, and the department is kind with their support of students financially as well as academically, and all of these contributed to my decision come here to SIUC.
Some of the courses that I enjoyed were those that focused on media arts and media arts theory. I really liked these because they provided a really strong background and a broad background in a lot of different media, and I find intersections between those media to be particularly fascinating.
I did have the chance to participate in the Big Muddy Film Festival. My role was a screener. So along with other students and faculty we met on a Saturday and reviewed films that were submitted to the festival and this was not only enlightening to see what kind of material was being submitted but we also had some good discussions as we viewed the films and compared our different takes.
I was fortunate to get the Morris Fellowship, which provides 3 years of full funding, and then it goes into an assistantship. So this allowed me extra time for class work, and it's been a really good experience and I'm grateful for the university.
I have presented my material at a number of conferences. I've also participated in the poster session that's held here on campus and worked on submitting material for publication which is still in progress.
My plans are to teach at a university or college level and also to continue my own creative writing and other media related pursuits. I do some photography and a couple of other things. I've always received a lot of support from the department.
In fact, it's been very impressive how open and welcome they've been to my concerns and how they've helped me to craft my program, and I would recommend for anybody considering a graduate program in any of the fields that MCMA covers to consider SIU.
Master of Arts
Master of Science
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My name is Crystal Essex, I am originally from Marion, Alabama. I am pursuing an M.S., specifically within Advertising and Strategic Communications.
My area of interest within the M.S. program specifically lies within advertising, public relations and marketing research. Within my program, I did my master's project on hair care advertising and it was titled "Going Straight: How Hair Care Advertising Constructs African American Beauty."
I chose SIUC because of the flexibility of the curriculum of the program.
I felt that I had the opportunity to learn other skills outside of my background already in the media but it specifically enhanced advertising and marketing research so I felt that the flexibility of the program was a great fit for me.
Through the university I am PROMPT fellow which allowed me to have a fellowship for the two years that I was here to complete my degree.
I had an assistantship with WSIU. The first year, I worked with River Region Evening Edition, which is the news station for WSIU. I had the opportunity to serve as the business manager and I interacted with the student workers on a daily basis.
The second year, I moved to promotions with WSIU and I had the opportunity to do various activities from designing promotional pieces to writing press releases, media advisories, designing newsletters, taking photos, so my experience within that realm of advertising research and graphic design was definitely enhanced by working with WSIU promotions.
I had the opportunity this past April to present at the MCMA Graduate Student Symposium in front of various faculty and other students who had different interests within the field of Communications.
As far as publications, I'm in the process of working with my advisor Dr. Katherine Frith to possibly publish a chapter for one of the books that she is editing.
My plans for the future are to pursue job opportunities within marketing research or public relations, and try my best to add to the field of advertising and marketing research.
I certainly would encourage you to overview the curriculum and look at it because it does provide flexibility for those who are interested in a program in which they can hone in on their skills
in one particular area, as well as developing skills that they may not have thought they originally wanted to pursue.
My name is Youssef Osman. I'm from Egypt. I'm a M.F.A. candidate in Mass Communication and Media Arts. My area of interest is mainly film, narrative. Both digital narrative or film.
I have a bachelor's degree and my master's degree from the Academy of Arts Higher Institute for Cinema from Egypt, and my background was mainly film directing and I worked in the industry over there in both commercials and music videos, but for years I've been experimenting with different formats working with photography, film, video and I liked the idea that the interdisciplinary program allows students to cross over in to different areas and experiment.
My project is basically focusing on the famous Middle Eastern text "1001 Arabian Nights." What I'm doing is basically adapting the structure to tell more of a personal approach to tell my own personal stories which deal with political and contemporary social issues.
There's a number of classes that I really liked here. Among them is the M.F.A. Studio classes which opens the door for you to experiment with different formats and a different style of work. The Critique classes were good as well. You get a chance to get everybody's feedback about your work on a weekly basis.
SIU is one of the few schools that really actually offers an assistantship from the first year to their M.F.A. students. I know that other schools usually offer that in the 2nd year or the 3rd year.
I gained a lot of experience from being a teaching assistant on a number of classes like Film Analysis, Copywriting, Advertising to even being a research assistant and helping professors on their own personal projects.
Throughout my M.F.A. program I was able to also teach a number of workshops. The school allows us this room to also gain experience teaching. I did a number of After Effects and Shake compositing workshops throughout the years and did various presentations on different kinds of cameras especially the digital cinematography DSLR cameras that are coming out right now. I think having the opportunity to do that was a great experience as well.
The M.F.A. program actually has a really good balance between practice and theory.
One of the great things is that we took a lot of theory classes in Mass Communication with a lot of Ph.D. students. So, it doesn't just focus on the practical side, it also tries to develop your theory which is very important, it has a great influence on your creative work as well.
What I would like to pursue is to both continue my production work and at the same time be able to teach while doing that, and I think that the M.F.A. degree as a terminal degree provides students with the opportunity to do that. The M.F.A. was able to provide that balance that made the whole degree more fun, the whole journey was pretty fun.
Hello, my name is Will Roberts. I'm from Miami, Florida and I'm an M.F.A. student in Media Arts. When choosing a place for my master's degree, I thought SIU was a great fit.
It's a cross-discipline program, and that's the kind of area that I like to go into--different aspects of art, media and things like that. So it fit well for me and I've learned from different people in the program that do different forms of media than me, so I think it's a perfect fit for me.
I was a sound guy, I did a lot of things with sound for documentaries and movies, but after continuing on through the program, it's a broad range of things that we are exposed to. I got into 3D animation, and now I'm 3D animation and sound guy.
Before coming to grad school, I shot a documentary in Liberia, West Africa. It was on an orphanage there, and I got to know 10-12 boys from the orphanage.
Now my thesis project is a fantasy-type animation that is based on true stories from the Liberian Civil War. Their stories and my stories kind of combine together. It's going to be special.
One of my favorite classes that I've taken thus far was Cade Bursell's "Shawnee Forest" class. The "Shawnee Forest" class was basically us going out in to the forest and making art. Growing up, I wasn't exposed to the forest, nature and stuff like that.
Coming from Miami--big city, concrete, inner city--that type of thing. It was just like this rush of creativity came out just being exposed to all this nature.
I participated in this project called the Sketchbook Project. It was a collaborative project with over 100 different artists that traveled around to 20 different cities in the U.S. Through that, I got a lot of exposure and one month I was a featured artist on the web site, I thought that was pretty cool.
After grad school, I plan to work in the industry, and later on be a teacher, if not when I get out of grad school, I can maybe teach. That's what grad school allows me to do, with my M.F.A. I can teach at the college level with the experience that I get from my TA and RA-ships it prepares us to be a teacher, or be an instructor or be a technical director for industry.
With anyone that's pursuing their M.F.A., SIU is a great school to do that. It's a cross-discipline program. Just like me, I came in as an audio guy and I'm leaving as something different, something else.
I'm Wendy Weinhold, I grew up in Nebraska and I am a 4th year Ph.D. in the Mass Communications and Media Arts College. My research area is media studies on the broadest level possible.
I'm interested in media studies from all different angles. But I am focused in qualitative research and my dissertation narrows in on print journalism, which is where I have a professional background.
Technically, right now my dissertation is without even a working title, but the previous working title that I was going with was "Letters from the Editor: American Journalists, New Media and Democracy."
Southern Illinois University Carbondale has exceptional faculty and a lot of really interesting opportunities I think to be involved in media, even at the graduate level.
I personally have done everything from work with the student print journalists at the Daily Egyptian, to having multiple different slots on air as a news anchor for WSIU TV, and I've also done some reporting for WSIU FM--a special arts program in focus. So it's been a really good opportunity for me to get immersed in all kinds of levels of media production as well as media theory.
One of the reasons that it's so hard for me to pick a favorite class is because so many of the classes that I had in my first two years of graduate study were really inspiring. Everything from Cinzia Padovani's Political Economy of Media class in which I was first really given the opportunity to encounter critical theory on a really in-depth level. And then Lisa Brooten's Qualitative Methods course really gave me an exciting opportunity to come at qualitative methods from a variety of angles.
The opportunities that I've had to get in front of classrooms have been the most exciting portions of assistantships that I've had here in my graduate study at SIU. Probably my favorite is the course that I taught this spring of 2010, Alternative Media in a Diverse Society, that's MCMA 204. It's pretty standard taught by a MCMA advanced graduate student. I had 57 students and they were interested in media from such an amazingly broad array of specialties.
They came from across the university. It was a really near opportunity for me as a graduate student who spends most of my time at the Communications Building to get to see what Southern Illinois University Carbondale's undergraduate student body was like on a really wide level.
I'll talk about my favorite two conferences that I've gone to, the first is Union for Democratic Communication and UDC is a really terrific organization of communication scholars and activists who are really interested in pushing faculty, scholars, activists, media makers to think about the responsibility for what it is that the media is out there making in the world, and I came to UDC entirely through associations with faculty at SIUC, so that's pretty important. The other conference that I have most enjoyed is The Future of Journalism/Newspapers conference that is held at the University of Cardiff in Wales.
I have participated in that conference both of the years that it has been organized, and that tip came to me through Cinzia Padovani, one of my faculty members and one of my committee members who said hey, this is the thing you're interested in, why don't you apply? As a result of both of those conferences I have two publications from there, two articles that are in the Journal of Journalism Practice and then another article that was published in Kaleidoscope, which is a qualitative student peer-reviewed publication, a yearly publication that comes out of Southern Illinois University's Speech Communication department.
I want to be a professor, I'm just waiting for the right university to find me and bring me home, but ultimately what I really want to do is teach media studies and critical journalism scholarship. I really enjoy teaching journalists as a former journalist myself. I also really enjoy getting them to think beyond simply the words they're putting on the page and the way they're organizing their ideas to question and consider the ways that they are making people and creating representations of ideas. Those are some really important things that I think journalists can really benefit from.
Master of Arts
Master of Science
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My name is Zubedah Nanfuka, I am from Uganda and I am an M.S. student in Professional Media and Media Management with a concentration in video documentary production.
I would say that my passion would be to use video documentary to basically inspire anyone in their rights, be it political activists or humanitarian agencies to basically foster social change in whichever way that they can.
Yes, I do have a final project and it's actually a video documentary I filmed in Uganada. Northern Uganda to be exact, and it basically focuses on former GOU soldiers who were kidnapped by a rebel group and how they are now back in the community and their integration process and what the community is doing to help them.
I'll have to say that the best class I have taken is the "Media Management" class and that is a core class in the M.S. program. I liked it specifically because it simulated a media environment and we worked in a team, which is a very real concept in the media world. We had to create projects from scratch and pitch them to possible funders, so I liked that about it. It really stimulated me intellectually and I learned more from it.
I took part in a special project, which doubles both as a class requirement where we had to create a video documentary as a group of 9 students about lead poisoning in Herculaneum, Missouri. It aired on WSIU, and i liked that we actually got to talk to the people who live in the mining town and find out what their concerns were about living in an area that is constantly polluted by lead.
The other opportunity that I got to volunteer with was the River Region Evening Edition here at SIUC. It's a student-run newscast. We had a summer camp in 2009, and we had a group of 15 high school students and they got to try out different camera work options including producing and filming their own news that was actually aired on WSIU.
I learned a lot in my program. I have no regrets in the choice I've made in terms of a school and also the kind of program that I'm doing right now because of the things that I'm taking away but also how applicable that the knowledge that I've learned is going to be in my future career.
Yes, I do have a graduate assistantship in the Director of Graduate Studies' office. This office basically helps in advisement of graduate students here in the college of Mass Communication and Media Arts. It's not just an administrative job or assistantship. It also exposes me in terms of being experience in working in a multi-cultural environment which are the students who come from all over the world.
My name is Lauren Selmon Roberts. Originally I am from Norman, Oklahoma and I am an M.F.A. candidate in Media Arts.
My background is in broadcast news. Now in the Master of Fine Arts program I really love combining the news world with the world of fine art.
My thesis project is a full-length documentary that was shot in Liberia, West Africa. It tells the story of one woman who saved the lives of over 250 kids during Liberia's war.
I initially found the M.F.A. program in a film school book and what drew my eye to it was that the M.F.A. program specifically has a three-year assistantship program for its students.
So when you compare it to similar programs across the country, it's very affordable.
One of the favorite classes that I've taken is a digital documentary class with professor Angela Aguayo.
In that class, it was really incredible because each student in the matter of a semester put their own documentary together and at the end of the semester we had a public screening where we invited the public to come and check out our work.
Because of my background in news, when I came to SIU I really wanted to stay involved with news and some on-camera work. So I got involved with River Region Evening Edition and did some volunteer reporting.
I also was the host for Scholastic Hi-Q, which is a game show that we have on campus here for high school students
Also, I was involved with the Big Muddy Film Festival. Two years, I served on the selection committee to see which films got into the festival.
For my assistantship, I helped out with documentary classes and some news courses.
It was really interesting to be a teacher, it was my first time doing that.
I had a fantastic time mentoring students through the creative sides of their news projects and their documentaries.
A few highlights of publicly showing my work: I showed one of my photo series' at the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival in Los Angeles, I presented some of my writing here on campus at the Global Media Research Center Conference, some research that I had done about the coverage that Africa receives here in the West.
In the future, I still want to combine my background in news with my newfound knowledge of fine art.
I'm going to be looking for some news jobs and some jobs that are more focused on long format work ... just sending my application out and seeing what doors open.
If you want to really learn how to think outside the box in experimental ways, alternative ways, ways that you don't think you've ever thought about before, I think this Masters of Fine Arts program will be a good fit for you because the professors here, at least for me taught me how to see things with a new lens, and by having my work critiqued by a diverse group of people day in and day out, it really teaches you to see what you make in a whole new way.
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