Company's coming! Help your J-School

We’ve been cleaning and working and organizing for the past two weeks getting ready for company. (And we spent an entire year doing a Self-Study Report about the J-School before this!)

A team of four, representing the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC), will be visiting the J-School next week.

The team members, Dr. Ann Brill, dean at the University of Kansas, Dr. Jannette Dates, dean at Howard University, Marcia Prior-Miller, a faculty member at Iowa State and Steve Geimann, a producer at Bloomberg News in Washington D.C. and president of the Society of Professional Journalists, will be in the Com Arts Building all day on Monday and Tuesday, October 15-16. They will be meeting with faculty, students and university administrators to judge the quality of the J-School. They will also be stopping by classes to observe. So, if you see a stranger in the hallway, be sure you greet them and help them out, if they ask.

We have scheduled two meetings of the entire team with students. The meetings are scheduled for 2-2:45 p.m., Monday in 191 CAS (Deeb) and 9-10 a.m., Tuesday in 306 CAS. Please stop by either day, if you can. This is very important to the J-School and to you. We have been continuously accredited since the process began in the late 1940s.

In other news, the second proficiency tests will be given Friday afternoon, October 19 in 147 CAS. Registration for the test will begin at 2:30 p.m. for the first exam and 4 p.m. for the second. Please bring your student ID, a calculator and a pencil with you for the test. This is the final test for the Fall term. You need to pass this test to enroll in JRN 200.

Three students, Jordan Barnes, Katie Rausch and Jonathan Oosting, along with faculty member Darcy Greene and me are heading to Toronto Wednesday for the Online News Association conference. Our students are part of a seven-university grant from the Knight Foundation to develop innovative community news projects. Our students are part of two teams who will be presenting their projects Thursday afternoon to major media executives. Wish them luck!