Communication: It's What We Are

By Spirit Staff

April 24, 2008

Pick up a Bulletin from Southwestern Adventist University and it’s not hard to see where the school’s communication department puts its priorities.

“It’s right there in black and white,” says Robert R. Mendenhall, chair of the department. “The Bulletin states that the aim of our department is to strengthen students’ personal, public, and professional communication skills.”

 The aim seems straightforward enough. But Mendenhall explains that communication goes well beyond something you do when called upon. It’s part of what you are. “Personal skills have to do with how you communicate with yourself and with God. Public skills have to do with your interaction with others on a daily level and your obligations to society. Professional skills train you to contribute in your career or wherever God calls you.”

  And even though communication technology and training students to use it wisely permeates everything the department does, Mendenhall and his colleagues never forget that the basics of effective communication never change.

34 Years in the Making

 While Richard Norman had been teaching speech at Southwestern since 1969, the school first offered a communication degree in 1974, with Mendenhall not only teaching those courses, but managing radio station KSUC (now KJCR) and working on a doctoral degree at the University of Texas in Austin. In 1987, John Williams joined the communication team and another, Michael Wiist, was added in 1994.

Communication was originally taught as part of the English department. However, in 1995 it became its own department. Even though Mendenhall had orchestrated the courses for years under the supervision of English department chair Herb Roth, now he was officially a department head.

See How They Learn

Today the department offers three majors: Radio-TV-Film, Journalism, and PR and Advertising. Students not only learn in the classroom; the department places a strong emphasis on internships. Each year, students have gained valuable insights through such internships, and many of those internships have resulted in jobs for students after

graduation. The communication department has developed a strong reputation throughout the Metroplex for providing intelligent interns with a strong work ethic. 

“I am at the point now that I will accept an internship from any of the Southwestern Adventist University radio/television students with only a telephone call…no personal interview is ever needed,” reads a letter from a Metroplex radio executive.

  Southwestern’s radio and TV stations play an important part in the education experience for communication students. FM station 88.3 KJCR was established by Raymond and Anna Beem in 1974 as KSUC. Today its 23,000-watt signal can be heard over an area of 16,000 square miles of north central Texas, with a potential audience of 1.75 million listeners. Students view the station as a ministry to the community, as well as a business. With the exception of General Manager Randy Yates and Chief Engineer Ron Macomber, all operations at the station—from choosing the music and programs to production work to on-air talent—are done by students. Not only is the station a valuable teaching tool, it is viewed by many in the community as an important outreach of the school.

KJCR not only broadcasts the Keene Seventh-day Adventist Church service on Saturday morning, but church services from the Field Street Baptist Church and the Cleburne First Baptist Church on Sunday. The station’s willingness to break down walls between the Adventist school and its neighbors of other denominations has made many friends throughout Johnson County. In addition to the station’s mandate by the FCC to meet the needs of all publics within its listening area, Yates sees the decidedly Christian programming as an important part of its mission.

“Our threefold mission is to train Christian broadcasters, represent Southwestern Adventist University to its community, and share the good news of Jesus Christ,” says Yates. “We need to lead people to Jesus first. You do that by reaching people where they are, and then leading them.”

Developments in TV

Yates also is general manager of TV station KGSW Channel 31 and the Studios at Southwestern, which were established in 1989. Operating a TV station is expensive, even with student labor, and for years the station made do with hand-me-down equipment from generous commercial stations in the area and elsewhere. In March 2007 a disaster prompted some to question whether the TV station would continue. A massive rainstorm broke through the roof of the TV station, flooding everything. Insurance inspectors wrote off the station as a total loss.

But the apparent disaster turned into a blessing in disguise. Money from the insurance settlement made it possible for the TV station to rebuild with completely new equipment and a newly remodeled studio.
KGSW-31 now has six new Apple computers, including two MacPros with 30-inch monitors, two MacPros with dual 23-inch monitors each, and two 23-inch iMacs.  The computers are also programmed with Final Cut Studio 2 that, along with the 30-inch monitors, allow for video editing in high definition (HD). 

The station also purchased four Panasonic HD cameras with wireless microphone capability.  Each camera uses an external hard drive that stores up to 350 gigabytes of video information, and can be uploaded into the computers within 15 minutes. 

The new studio also includes a new green screen, and a set three times larger than the old one.  The crowning addition to the station is the installation of new lighting by a Fort Worth company, whose owner won an Emmy Award for his lighting work on “The Tonight Show.”

Real-life Training

Glen Robinson joined the communication department in 1998 after 21 years as an author, public relations professional, and newspaper, magazine and book editor. He holds journalism majors to a high standard. The senior-level class Feature Writing requires students to write seven articles and get four of them published. Part of what makes this goal possible are regular interviews with editors at several publications during the semester. As a result, students have seen their bylines in Insight, Guide, the Southwestern Union Record, the Adventist Review, the Keene Star, the Cleburne Times-Review and the Southwestern Spirit.

“The class is intended to teach two things,” says Robinson. “First, it’s effective in helping students gain confidence in their own abilities by forcing them to try to get published. Second, they learn that editors need writers just as writers need editors.”

Journalism students who take the class Editorial Techniques are responsible for editing and providing material for the Southwesterner Online, the University’s first online newspaper. With near-daily deadlines for stories, the website is completing its second year of publication, and now offers video links for news stories as well.

The senior-level course Applied PR and Advertising raised some eyebrows among students when it was first taught by Robinson in Spring, 2006. The class is structured as close as possible to the way a real public relations or advertising firm would operate. During the semester, six outside clients would meet with the class and present a real-life public relations, publicity or advertising problem for the class. Students then are organized into teams that compete for the grades. One team—the one which comes up with the best solution to the challenge—is selected by the client to receive the only A for that project, with students on the other teams receiving lesser grades.

“Applied PR and Advertising definitely opened my eyes to the real world of PR and advertising,” says Amy Burt, ’06, now marketing coordinator for Moore and Associates, Inc. in Valencia, California. “It’s a competitive field, and I think Applied PR and Advertising was an excellent addition to the Communication Department.”

“I can honestly say it was the most challenging class I took in college,” says Jaclyn Darmody Pruehs, ’06, who is now an alumni affairs officer for the School of Allied Health Professions at Loma Linda University. “It made me rack my brain so hard for creative ideas and for the practical reasoning behind those ideas. That class helped me to think about the ‘why’ behind design, advertising and public relations.”

Onward and Upwards

The department is proud of its track record for communication students leaving to pursue careers in media (see box above). One of the indicators of that pride is the simple fact that Mendenhall has successfully kept track of all but five of his 230 communication graduates.

Kristina Pascual, ’06, is assistant director of communication for the Texas Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. “I would never exchange my experience at Southwestern for anything,” she says. “I formed valuable friendships, learned from priceless professors and am now applying what I learned.”

Josh Pena, ’06, another student who turned an internship into a career, is a video news editor for CBS 11/KTXA Channel 21 in Dallas/Fort Worth. “Through the communication department I was given the education and hands-on knowledge that was needed to quickly take steps into the real world and land a job in one of the top television markets in America.”

On the continuum that has esoteric lectures about theory on one extreme and technical trade-school training on the other, Mendenhall puts his department somewhere in the middle. “We are training not just D.J.s, cub reporters and camera operators,” says Mendenhall. “We’re training editors, corporate communication directors and station managers. We want our students to see the bigger picture.”

“I left a career in Adventist publishing because I saw a need to develop Christian writers,” says Robinson. “I’m rewarded every day as I see what our graduates are accomplishing.”

“What I’m proudest of is when I see freshmen walk into the station and I see they are intimidated by the equipment,” says Yates. “Then I see that same student as a junior using that same equipment with confidence. They know what they’re doing. They know that they can succeed.”

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