by Aden Sievert
Students from local high schools spent the day with Hood’s communication arts professors Friday, Nov. 3, at the college’s Second Annual High School Media Day.
The event was planned by professor Brooke Witherow and her students from the events planning class, which is a new course offered this fall to teach students how to properly plan large promotional events.
“Every event has something that doesn’t go according to plan, and this event was no different,” Witherow said. “We faced one unexpected moment, and the event planning students took the lead and solved the issue so that it never negatively impacted our visitors. I couldn’t be prouder of how well they did.”
The goal for this event is to create interest in high school students to follow a career path in the communication arts department.
“We wanted to showcase the communications program and Hood College as a school itself to local and non-local high school students that were maybe interested or wanted to know more about what communications majors did and learned about in college,” Braden Weinel, one of the event’s student workers, said.
As attendees arrived at Whitaker, they were greeted by event staff and ushered to Rosenstock’s Delaplaine Media Center for a quick introduction to the day’s schedule and to meet the rest of the communication arts professors. Professors Liz Atwood, Alan Goldenbach and Tim Jacobsen taught lessons.
The students were given a crisis that they would be following for the day. The crisis prepared for them was the tanker truck explosion on Route 15 last spring.
The attendees were split into four groups and began 35-minute rotating seminars. Jacobsen spoke about photography and videography, Atwood provided information about writing news stories, Goldenbach talked about skepticism, ethics and law within the media and Witherow detailed how one should communicate strategically when faced with a crisis.
After completing rotating seminars with all the professors, the students met back in the Delaplaine Media Center for a mock news conference to practice what they had learned.
The news conference allowed the attendees to jump into the shoes of real crisis communicators as they announced information about the tanker explosion to the public as it came in, as well as answering mock questions that members of the media would usually ask in a serious situation such as the tanker explosion.
As the news conference ended, the attendees were guided by the event planning staff to the dining hall to enjoy lunch before returning to the Delaplaine Media Center for a script writing session and a recording experience in Hood’s broadcasting studio.
After the last session, the attendees returned to their respective schools.
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