Fall Break
October 15-18
Romeo & Juliet October 27-29
November 1-5
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Jodi Whitworth Senior
Major: Electronic Media Comm
What are your goals for the future?
The goal for the near future is to find a multimedia journalist or reporting position at a TV station. My ultimate goal is to work at the national level, perhaps as a news correspondant for a major network like CNN, FOX or NBC. A dream job of mine is Debra Norville's at Inside Edition. It's one of my favorite shows!
What opportunities have you had at Northwestern?
This summer I interned at WHO-TV 13, the NBC affiliate in Des Moines, Iowa. It was a great experience, and they practically considered me one of their own employees. They were nice enough to even ask me back for the Iowa Caucus in February 2012. Also, at Northwestern I am the producer and anchor of the campus TV Station, Eagle 7 News. I have been involved with that since my freshman year and have really benefited from the hands-on atmosphere of the workshop.
What is your favorite thing about NWC?
My favorite thing about NWC are the friendships I have made. It sounds so cliche, but I have found my best friends in college, and that has made my college experience all the more fun! |
Kelli Farnam Public Relations
Where has life taken you since graduation?
After graduating, I was accepted into a summer-long internship program at Olson, a top independent advertising agency located in Minneapolis, and went on board with their Account Management team. Throughout the summer, I expressed curiosity and built relationships with people across the agency. At the conclusion of my internship, I was hired as a contractor on the Brand Management team, assisting with "all things Olson," including PR, marketing, branding, event planning, Effie award show planning and photography production. At the beginning of this summer, I accepted a position with a start-up recruitment outsourcing firm, Spoleto Partners. I manage our PR/social media/branding/marketing and assist with all recruitment efforts. Life since graduation has been an exciting wild ride, to say the least!
What advice do you have for students?
Build relationships throughout your time at college. Network, network, network! Most people are more than willing to offer students informational interviews. In my experience, there is nothing to be afraid of and nothing to lose when approaching someone for experiential advice. Don't give up when not every door opens. The right ones will. Want to stand out? Be yourself, be respectful, and be curious. It's also a great idea to make use of groups on LinkedIn and various networking events specifically positioned to assist you with your future career aspirations. You should never be too busy to invest in your future. Beyond career preparation, have fun enjoying the solid relationships the Lord has put in your life! Careers change, but friends last.
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DMA students get inside look at the world of graphic arts
Th is summer, Digital Media Arts professor Iyare Oronsaye and two of his newly graduated animation students traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia for SIGGRAPH, the world's premier conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques.
"SIGGRAPH is a great introduction to the business world of animation," explained Oronsaye. "It's also a way to keep students engaged and excited about all the possibilities in animated films and games."
The students spent the week surrounded by nearly 16,000 professionals as they experienced presentations on everything from visual effects and character creation to video game design. Gabe Lockrem said, "I think the biggest thing for me was the talks on how stories develop and evolve over time. It really gave me good insight into the writing process to see how big name studios work creatively."
For Marcus Lanser, the conference exhibition floor held a unique opportunity to meet and interact with software companies and with artists from production studios. "You get to see the techniques they are using for higher scale production and how they can be applied to your own work. This also allows you to get immediate feedback on some of your own work."
"There were also a ton of professionals who were willing to talk and listen to you," said Lockrem, "and give advice to those of us who were just starting out. I'm really glad I went and I hope that I'll be able to go again in the future."
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Cotton Patch Gospel: Good news, bluegrass style
 The heart of Georgia was transported to Maranatha Hall in September as alumni of Northwestern College joined together to produce Cotton Patch Gospel, a reworking of the gospel story set in Gainesville, Georgia.
A rusted pickup truck, its trunk filled with peaches, a Coca-Cola sign and twanging banjos helped transport the audience to the south. The classic gospel message was reworked to include tap dancing, folk music group The Royal Engine Company and characters that were renamed and reexamined----for example, Peter became "Rock" and Judas, "Jud."
"It is a warm, authentic, grass-roots retelling of the gospel story," said director Donald "Doc" Rainbow. "The show is full of humor, toe-tappin' bluegrass music, delightful characters and the life-altering teaching of Jesus."
The show's alumni cast featured Nathan Cousins, Stephanie (Anderson) Cousins, Mike Hadley, Brian Pearson, Stephanie (Zwald) Wipf and Brett Witter. The bluegrass band also included college alumni; members are Aaron Bristow, Micah Patchin and Zak Stelter.
Nathan Cousins said, "Unlike a traditional musical, where one stands on stage and belts out a solo and delivers a powerful chorus with a large cast, the musical experience of Cotton Patch is more like sitting in your living room with all your friends, telling stories. There's nothing like singing bluegrass and Americana with a group of people."
Check out photos from the show on our Facebook page.  |
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LAFSC: More than just a school
Los Angeles is the Mecca of the film industry. And the L.A. Film Studies Center (LAFSC) is a study-abroad program that allows students to stay in Los Angeles while studying filmmaking and learning insights into the business.
Film major Ross Fleming studied at LAFSC last year. "I was fortunate enough to have had film internships before going to LAFSC, but being in L.A. provided me with a completely different experience. Before going to L.A. the film industry was like a giant snow globe that I was only able to look at. Being in L.A. was like actually being inside of the snow globe; it makes everything so much more realistic."
LAFSC offers students many helpful tools, such as a film library, state-of-the-art technology and discussion panels."Some panels featured writers from That 70's Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Home Improvement. We could ask how they dealt with issues such as sexuality in film, being a Christian in this field and how to break into the business."
A key part of the LAFSC experience is the required internship with film industry insiders. Fleming interned with the producers of the movie Contagion. At his internship, Fleming was able to see how the movie was pieced together.
"Living together with a community of believers who want to make films forces you to be involved in learning to collaborate better. You live in an apartment with other guys. It's just a lot of fun. We could go to the beach, we went cliff jumping, and we learned how to be better filmmakers. LAFSC is not just a school. It's an experience."
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Notable Notes
PR grad Mandi Cherico ('11), who works full time as the Media Relations Associate for Feed My Starving Children, was recently featured on KARE11 News. See the video online.
PR major Vanessa Graetz is spending the fall semester working as an intern with Mocha Club in Nashville. Mocha Club is an online community of people giving up the cost of two mochas a month to fund relief and development projects in Africa.
Junior Dan Hazel made his Minneapolis Musical Theatre debut this summer as a member of the ensemble in the regional premiere of the hit Broadway musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Dr. Kent Kaiser's article "Gender Dynamics in Producing News on Equality in Sports: A Dual Longitudinal Study of Title IX Reporting by Journalist Gender" was published in the September 2011 issue of the International Journal of Sport Communication.
Dr. Kaiser appeared on KARE11 news in July to discuss the impact of the debt-ceiling conflict in Congress and its impact on regular Americans. See the video online.
Dr. Kaiser presented his paper "Conflict Frames, Media Bias, and Power Distribution: Title IX as a Longitudinal Social-Movement Case" at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) annual conference in St. Louis.
Dr. Kaiser was appointed as vice president of the Minnesota Citizens Redistricting Commission.
Dr. Robin Rileyıs documentary film, Utopia On the Rio Grande, was accepted to the White Sands International Film Festival in Las Cruces, NM. The festival hosted feature films, documentaries, short films and student works, and Rileyıs was one of just 10 documentary features to run at the three-day event.
Short film Another Year, which was directed by Electronic Media major Grant Swanson, won Best Cinematography in the Minneapolis 48Hour Film Project this summer. The film was also featured at the South Dakota Film Festival in September.
Electronic Media grad Ben Wilson ('11) is now working as a Production Technician at WDIO-TV in Duluth.
PR grad Kendall Young ('10) was recently hired as a Digital Media Associate at the Mall of America.
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Note From the Chair
Once again Facebook has made changes to its site, and once again some of its users are up in arms about threats to privacy.
The new Facebook changes involve integration of multimedia apps with user profiles, opening the door to a world where information on every song you listen to on Spotify, every movie you watch on Netflix, every article you read online----in short, all of your interaction with mass media----could be made available to your friends.
Of course, as a user you'd have to give the application permission to share this information. But it's alarmingly easy to grant permissions without realizing it, and sometimes Facebook changes its permission settings, so keeping your permissions where you want them can be an ongoing battle. And once the information is out there, it's there forever.
So is privacy an outdated notion in the digital age? It might be, and maybe that's not as frightening an idea as it seems. After all, you don't set up a Facebook account because you want to keep things to yourself - that's what a diary is for. An account on Facebook or Google+ is all about sharing. Users of Facebook are sharing a billion things a day, and we're doing it because we want to.
Why this hunger for sharing? I think it's at least in part because we were created for fellowship with God. We're built with desire to be fully known, as only God can know us. It's our desire to hide that is a result of the fall----not our desire to share ourselves with others. Life a life that is pleasing to God, and you won't have to worry that Facebook keeps coming up with new ways to keep you from hiding your light under a bushel. |
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