Including graduate students in research projects can serve as a prime means of encouraging academic and professional growth, especially in a rapidly evolving media environment which constantly brings new concerns to news communities. Dr. Angela Powers, professor within the Greenlee School, alongside the graduate students of JLMC 506 are joining their efforts to research the increasingly important subject of civility as it applies to media management.
Dr. Powers’ involvement in addressing issues of civility extends beyond the classroom. While formally acting as the director of the school, the school first began tying into a university initiative by helping to promote the
Principles of Community
which included “Respect,” “Cooperation” and “Richness of Diversity.” In September, the department hosted the
Greenlee Summit: Communications and Civility in Our Democracy
. This event allowed media managers and professionals to discuss how they were addressing civility issues including lack of trust, fake news and overall incivility.
Dr. Powers and the graduate students in JLMC 506 are working on a project to analyze the content of panel discussions of the summit on civility. Dr. Powers explains, “The U.S. is currently experiencing intractable conflict… where differing views on politics especially related to the presidential election are becoming more and more charged. This creates anxiety and actually serves to thwart new information. Over time, people grow increasingly certain of the “rightness” of their views and increasingly critical of the beliefs and actions of others”. The purpose of their research is to identify how media managers are addressing the challenges of gathering and presenting balanced information in this politically charged environment especially as incivility in social media dominates news and public affairs.
When asked to describe her relationship working with graduate students, Dr. Powers expressed, “In a word…loyalty. I work as hard for them as they do me. And it is so much easier to stay in contact through social media. For example, one of my former graduate students contacted me this week for a letter of reference. He started in my media management class and wrote his thesis on the management of the sound recording industry. Now he is finishing his Ph.D. and is applying for a position at a university. I enjoy helping graduate students make connections to be successful in their lives and their careers. I actually get more out of it than I give”.
Yuxi He, the graduate teaching assistant for JLMC 506 and research assistant for the project, commented that, “Although I didn't enroll in this course, during the assistantship, even I could learn a lot from students' media company analyses and learn some real practical database tools on my own. From this short-term course, I've learned how to conduct a qualitative communication research study, how to chair research meetings with students, and practice my communication and problem-solving skills”.
Dr. Powers relates her relationship with graduate students to that of her own as a graduate student at Michigan State University, “I was fortunate to work with top-notch professors when I was a graduate student at Michigan State University. I learned how to be a researcher by observing first-hand the time and dedication they committed producing quality research. They were also generous in offering opportunities for me to co-author and participate in their research which helped launch my own research agenda. I like to provide these same opportunities to the graduate students who work with me. As my career starts to wind down after more than 30 years, my goal is to see
the careers
of my graduate students
take off”.
