1. Program Review Presentation April 29th, 2015
Journalism
Program Review Presentation
April 29th, 2015

2. Program Description
The American River College journalism program provides an extensive academic study and practical hands-on training to prepare students for careers in media fields. This includes training in reporting, writing, photography, video, broadcast, public relations, editing, production, and page and Web design.
The department provides both vocational training and academic learning and offers both transferable and nontransferable degrees.
In addition to providing its students with training and education, the student-media products produced within the department (The Current, arcurrent.com and Dam! magazine) provide the greater American River College community with news reports, publicity, information, and a voice.
The skills and critical thinking students develop within the department prepare them for jobs within media industries and are transferable to many other fields outside of journalism.
Brief Description of your program. Who are you? One Slide, 2 minutes

3. Benchmarks How do we know the program is successful?
Short answer: We don’t.
Our one-person department has had five full-time professors in six years. Because of this turnover, many of the facts, figures and anecdotal evidence that could support our claim of success do not exist.
We can rely on some figures (mainly the data the college collects) and anecdotal evidence (information supplied by former students now in the field), but we lack the departmental evidence a department without such turnover would have.
Our evidence: Our advisory board, made up of industry professionals, has supported our current curriculum and instruction; we compete well against other programs at state conferences; while our department lags slightly behind the college in terms of student success, we are near the average.
Improvements over the past four semesters, including an ADT degree and updated curriculum should allow a clear path toward success over the next six years.

4. Program -- Strengths
The journalism department has in place the components to provide quality instruction to students in spite of six years of turnover.
The equipment and resources that are used provide a solid foundation for students wishing to enter media fields and provide a hands-on learning environment that force students to engage the technology, ethical concerns and hurdles they will need to navigate in a professional environment.
Successful completion of either degree ensures that students have also developed the interpersonal skills necessary to thrive in an office environment regardless of whether that environment is attached to journalism.
Faculty: Our current full-time faculty member is the 2015 California Journalism Education Coalition’s Educator of the Year.

5. Program -- Challenges
Turnover and enrollment are the biggest challenges the program has faced the past six years.
Turnover in the department's lone full-time position has left a void with regard to growth and stability, though that might change now that the position is restaffed.
Enrollment traditionally has been low, but loss of repeatability and the inability of past full-timers to address that situation before the state deadline had a significant and negative impact on enrollment. Enrollment should rise in the coming years, since those issues have been resolved by the current full-timer.

6. Planning Implications
The journalism program is in the process of reinventing itself from a pre-Internet educational facility to one that is on the cutting edge of digital media. While much of this can be done relatively inexpensively, the department needs to continue to receive funding for new equipment that ensures students leave here with the skills to compete in modern media industries.
Stability, and the advocacy it can create for the department, has to be a key goal for the program. Lack of stability has hurt the program greatly in the past.
The program should make competition a major goal. While we already compete on a state level at JACC, we need to invest in national organizations to better prepare our students for the competitive fields they will be entering upon graduation. We also need to compete at noncommunity college national competitions (ACP, CMA) to help prepare our transferring students four university programs.