Zubedah from Uganda - M.S. in Professional Media and Media Management

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.