Journalism department to future students: ‘@ me’
Students at Utah State University will soon have the option to tweet, post, and Snapchat their way to a degree.
After nearly two years of development, the current social media course offered by USU's journalism and communication department will be expanded into three separate courses this fall.
According to social media professor Candi Carter Olson, the new class subjects will be foundations and theory, social media content creation and analytics, and client management.
“A social media emphasis," Carter Olson said, "will allow students to explore these aspects and prepare themselves for workplaces where they will be judged on their social media presence and asked to produce professional-quality branded material for companies.”
The department's current social media course has been taught by both Carter Olson and journalism professor Debra Jenson. The two agreed that a one-semester class wasn’t enough to prepare students for the changing multimedia landscape that awaits them after graduation.
Jenson said this new track to graduation will allow Utah State to better compete against regional universities that don’t offer a comprehensive social media program.
Brynn Puzey, a social media consultant who graduated from Utah Valley University’s communications program in 2018, said she received formal training on key topics at school — but it was outside of the classroom that she fully grasped what went into the job.
“Everything is social media now,” Puzey said. “Any and every business needs to have a presence and understanding of what social platforms their target audiences are on, and how they can use it to connect to potential customers.”
As job opportunities around social media expand, Puzey said the added courses are a step in the right direction for the university.
Social media marketing jobs in the United States, a position that falls under the umbrella of public relations specialist, will grow around 9 percent between 2016 and 2026, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Meeting that growth with interested students isn’t daunting to the department’s faculty; it’s keeping up with the speed at which social media changes that will pose a challenge to the program.
The department will need to listen to graduates and employers to stay attuned to the fast-moving digital world, Jenson said.
Carter Olson said it may be difficult to keep up with social media advances because of how quickly communication channels change, but it won’t be impossible.
“The foundations of what make a powerful message remain the same," Carter Olson said, "as do many of the ideas for finding and tailoring messages to audiences, designing messages that appeal to specific audiences, and understanding readers' needs."