Students receive credit through internships

     This is the second in a two-part series examining the communications and media studies minor at Tufts. The first part, which ran in yesterday's issue, discussed the limitations that the minor poses to students interested in business. This installment will focus on the role of internships in the minor and the restrictions of the program as a résumé-builder.
    While many students choose to take the traditional route to completing their requirements — opting to sit through lectures, fill out problem sets and suffer through grueling multiple-choice exams — students in some disciplines choose to take a less conventional path.
    The communications and media studies (CMS) program at Tufts allows students a wide range of options when completing the requirements for the minor, one of which includes taking part in internships in a variety of concentrations.
    Senior Christine Attura, who is majoring in psychology, has completed two internships for credit. Attura explained that through her internships, she received valuable experience in several communications fields, including public relations, strategic communications and publishing.
    Attura said that her experiences with internships gave her a new look at the field.
    "It was interesting to compare what I've learned in class and then see what more I could learn through an internship," she said.
    In addition to the internship option, the Experimental College (ExCollege) plays a large role in the minor, and students who are involved in the program commonly take a wide variety of classes to fill their requirements. CMS Program Director Julie Dobrow explained that each semester, the CMS directors ask the entire faculty to send courses for them to consider counting toward one of the three CMS minors: mass communications, film studies and multimedia arts. "We examine syllabi to see if a course has content about media and communications that are at least 50 percent of the course content," Dobrow said in an e-mail to the Daily.
    "ExCollege classes are different — prospective instructors have to go through a rigorous process of submitting an application, having their proposals reviewed by faculty, being interviewed by student and faculty committees and then getting decided upon by the ExCollege Board, who look at all the data and try to pick an interesting slate of diverse courses," she continued. "We at CMS look at the selected courses and go through the same process described above to see if they should count for CMS credit. As for our own courses, we try to listen to what students are interested in taking and develop new, cutting-edge classes to add to our roster."
    Students pursuing a minor in communications must complete the one required course for the program, Sociology 40: Media and Society, as well as a senior project or option course in addition to the regular classes they take within the minor. According to senior and CMS minor Victoria Alberini, some students find it frustrating that the option course, which requires students to take a class and write an extended paper about their experience, can only be taken senior year, and even if a student has already taken an approved option course class as a junior, he or she cannot use that credit.
    "[It] seems silly, because senior year is hectic, and it doesn't make much sense to require a class [that can] be taken only senior year," Alberini said.
    Dobrow explained that the senior requirements are meant to help students bring together all of the knowledge that they have acquired throughout their media studies education.
    "We want these [senior projects or courses] to be the capstone experience that pulls together courses, internships and other experiences, so they are taken in senior year," Dobrow said. "The senior project is an opportunity for a student to do an original project in the media and/or communications field. It can take many forms, from an empirical thesis to a film to an advertising campaign to a screenplay to a photojournalism essay to a Web site — the list goes on."
    Dobrow continued that the course option is an alternative to the senior project for people who feel that they cannot undertake a senior project either because of time constraints or for any number of other reasons.
    Another criticism that some students have of the program is that because it is not offered as a major, completed CMS minors are not tracked on students' degree sheets, according to CMS Associate Director Susan Eisenhauer. This limitation can be frustrating when students are submitting their degrees and applying for jobs later in life.
    Still, the minor is becoming increasingly popular at Tufts, and many students see value in taking the courses for their own sake, regardless of what their degrees say.
    Attura, who will likely go into some communications field after she graduates, said that overall, her experience with the CMS program has helped her shape many of the views about what she wants to do with her career.
    "I've definitely been influenced by the CMS minor. It's opened my eyes to that path, which is nice, because even though I think liberal arts is great and opens your eyes to more than vocational schools, it's nice to know that you can go into marketing or something like that with a liberal arts degree," she said. "So many people are interested in communications, and it's such a good perspective to have just as a person living in society, because everyone watches TV, everyone goes to the movies, everyone is exposed to thousands and thousands of advertisements in their lifetime."
    Dobrow shares Attura's views. "Media are a part of how we live today, and there's no question that to be an informed and engaged citizen in the 21st century, as well as to get a job in almost any field, you need to understand media," she said. "Students know this, and combined with their own great personal interest in various forms of media, I think this is why they flock to CMS in such large numbers."