Geoff Kass: Good morning. To our East Coast participants, good afternoon, if only by a few seconds. Welcome to the USC Master of Communication Management Student Experience Webinar, presented by the USC Annenberg School for Communication in Journalism. My name is Geoff Kass, and I’ll be your host today. I’d like to thank you for joining us and taking time out of your busy schedule. Geoff Kass: Good morning. To our East Coast participants, good afternoon, if only by a few seconds. Welcome to the USC Master of Communication Management Student Experience Webinar, presented by the USC Annenberg School for Communication in Journalism. My name is Geoff Kass, and I’ll be your host today. I’d like to thank you for joining us and taking time out of your busy schedule.
Before we begin, I’d like to review what you can expect during this presentation. To cut down on background noise, we’ve muted your phone lines so you can hear us, but we cannot hear you. If you have any questions, please type them in the Q&A box in the lower right-hand corner of your screen and hit send. We’ll answer as many as time allows, but feel free to enter your questions as you think of them. Our advisors will also be available immediately following the Q&A for any additional questions and to help guide you through an application.
A PDF and a recording of today’s presentation will be available within just a few days.
Here’s a quick look at what we’ll be covering today. First, I’ll introduce you to our panelists: Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, T. J. Stevko, and Jordan Beck.Dr. Weintraub will begin with a short overview of the Master of Communication Management Program curriculum and why you should choose USC Annenberg. She’ll then talk a bit about the advantages of online learning. After Dr. Weintraub’s presentation, we’ll hear from T. J. Stevko. T. J. earned his Communication Management graduate degree from USC Annenberg in 2007; and he’ll talk to us about what he’s doing now and how the program has contributed to his professional life and career goals.
Next, Jordan Beck will walk you through the student online learning experience and the learning community, including a demonstration of an actual learning module. One of our enrollment advisors, Mark Karkoska, will spend a minute talking about the admissions process. He’ll also explain the advisor’s roles as your advocates and guides throughout the process.
Then after a brief Q&A session, you’ll have that opportunity to speak directly and privately with an advisor about your goals and any concerns.Our first presenter today is Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, Director of the Master of Communication Management Master’s Degree Program and Clinical Professor of Communications for the USC Annenberg School for Communication in Journalism. Dr. Weintraub began her career as an assistant professor at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, where she was also the Director of Forensics. She moved on to Hughes Aircraft where she held a number of communications positions over a 15-year period, including Director of Corporate Communication. Dr. Weintraub received her bachelor’s degree from UCLA and her master’s and PhD degrees from USC.
Hello, Dr. Weintraub. Thank you for your time today. I’m going to turn the presentation over to you.
Dr. Weintraub: Thank you very much. I’m delighted to be here. Let’s see, let’s begin with the classes that you’re going to be taking. And so let’s take a look at the curriculum. The way the program is set up is students take two classes per semester. Everybody begins with their core class, Managing Communication, and their research methodology class, Uses of Communication Research.
Managing Communication is our macro-organizational communication class. And it is the one that really helps you start to understand how communication works within an organization from process level. We’re not talking here about the communication function within an organization. You get to that a little bit later. But this one really looks at the way communication flows, the way networks work, the way organizations structure themselves to make communication more effective or, all too often I fear, not as effective.
In the Uses of Communication Research class, you’ll learn the basic methodology that we use to research in the social sciences and communication in specific. We think this is a real critical class, and that’s why we put it at the beginning. I won’t pretend that it’s everybody’s favorite class, but I will tell you it is one of the classes that afterwards we hear from students talking about how much this class was useful in their real jobs. Because we don’t expect you to become statisticians out of this class. We do expect you to be smart consumers of the research that others do. You may hire a market research company to research something around your company’s product line. Or you may hire an HR consulting organization to do employee survey and get your employee satisfaction data.
In the Uses of Communication Research class, you’ll learn the basic methodology that we use to research in the social sciences and communication in specific. We think this is a real critical class, and that’s why we put it at the beginning. I won’t pretend that it’s everybody’s favorite class, but I will tell you it is one of the classes that afterwards we hear from students talking about how much this class was useful in their real jobs. Because we don’t expect you to become statisticians out of this class. We do expect you to be smart consumers of the research that others do. You may hire a market research company to research something around your company’s product line. Or you may hire an HR consulting organization to do employee survey and get your employee satisfaction data.
Strategic Corporate Communication is a class that I teach, and this class takes a look at the communication that an organization needs to do with its stakeholders. ______ does look at communication as a function and what the students in the class do is look at particular issues and create communication plans.
Integrated Marketing Communication Strategies is our basic marketing communication class. Sorry, I needed to take a sip of water. In this class, you learn about the way marketing communication works, both integrated with all the other kinds of communication and how do you determine what will be the effective marketing communication strategy for a particular situation.
Communicating Strategy and Change is another one of our organizational communication classes. And in this one, you look at the critical elements involved with making certain that an organization has all of its internal, primarily, stakeholders aligned around its business strategies and what is happening with any change efforts that are undergoing. You’ll learn about strategy, because you have to understand strategy in order to be able to communicate it. You’ll learn – you’ll read the change literature. You will look at how people in organizations relate to change, manage change, and how to make it most effective.
I’ve gonna go blow it now and talk about Communication Added to Values and Behaviors. This is basically our persuasion and influence class. We think that no matter what you do in the communication world, it is extremely important to understand the influence literature. To be able to understand how it is that people are actually moved from where they are to where you want them to be. And it’s particularly important whether you’re in marketing communication, whether you are in corporate communication, whether you are communication strategists, whether you are consultants.Global Marketing Communication is our second marketing class. And here you’re starting to look at what goes on with an organization when they are marketing. How do you get local advantages in a global environment? Whether you are working for a transnational company, whether you’re working for an international company; but in this day and age, any marketing effort probably go beyond our country’s borders. And it’s important to understand how that works.
The communication research practicum is what we have our students do in place of a master’s thesis. This is a professional program, and we think it’s important that you walk out with a portfolio. Our professors who work with you in the communications research practicum, make certain that you are going to be able to use what you do in this class as both a culminating experience where the program – but just as importantly that you will be able to use this to demonstrate what you can do for a promotion where you’re working now, for a job interview to show that you can take on new projects and new responsibilities beyond, perhaps, what you already have been doing.In each of the classes, after your first semester, you will have what we call practicum week. And in practicum week, you will be using the work that you’re doing in that particular class to start to think about the implications of what you’re learning in that class that might be useful in your practicum. So by the time you get there, you have started the work in determining what it is you want that practicum to cover. So that’s what you’re gonna study at Annenberg.
Now, let’s talk about why USC Annenberg. This is a master’s program only for a working professional. Everybody you will be taking classes with will also be your teachers, because you will learn from each other. You will share your work experience. You will talk about issues that you are facing in the jobs that you’re in, and you will get as much out of the people you are going to classes with as you will from your instructors.
The program is done cohort style, which means that you will go through the program with the same group of people over the course of all of your classes. Now, each class is divided into sections of no more than 20 people. So that doesn’t mean that you will have the same 20 people all the time, but everyone will have gone through the same set of experiences that you have gone through.
You can complete the program in less than two years. And this is important, we found, for working professionals. You have a lot on your plate. You have a lot of responsibilities at work, at home; and although two classes will add a little bit to your workload, we also know that it’s really important for you to get through as quickly as possible. And we think doing this in two classes per year in something around 20 months is the best way for you to get that very important master’s degree.
We think that we have some of the best faculty around. The people you will be taking classes from all have doctorates. They have worked in the professional world as well as in the academic world. Some, like me, actually held jobs in the corporate world between our stints in academia. Others do consulting in the corporate world, although they have been full-time academics. And others do research around issues and problems that face real organizations and will be able to share that with you. We have an extraordinary team of faculty in the online program, and I’m very, very proud of them.
This is gonna be a rigorous online curriculum. We don’t want you to think that online and easy are synonymous. We want you to think that online and valuable and rigorous and making you think and expanding your perspective are synonymous.
We have a state-of-the-art course design which you’re gonna see at the end of this presentation. And we have finished – we’re just about finished with our first semester. And the feedback we’re getting from our first cohorts has been terrific. They’re enjoying it. They’re liking it. They are feeling challenged. And one of my professors and I were speaking this week and somebody asked her what she thought about online teaching versus in-class teaching. And she does both. And she said she would never want to give up on-campus teaching, but that online is clearly more fun.When you join USC, you become part of the chosen family. We have alumni organizations in every major city in most countries; and wherever you are, you will be able to find an alumni network to join. It is an amazing connection to have, and you will seriously enjoy watching college football wearing your USC colors.
So let’s talk a little bit about online learning. I already told you that one of my professors said it’s more fun. Here’s what it will mean to you. Now let me begin by saying I created the first online class for the on-campus program in 2003, and I’ve been teaching in it ever since. Although I love teaching face-to-face, and still do that, there is a reason why I worked hard to make sure that the first online program was Communication Management. Because I think that online learning gives you an extremely rich learning experience.
You will be working when it is most convenient to you. But I will warn you that if you’re planning on doing all of your work on the weekends, you may wanna re-think that process because you’re gonna wanna keep up with what’s going on in the class. Although the way the classes are designed, your weekends will certainly be a place where you’ll do a lot of that work.
The online learning management system that we use makes connecting with others in your class, with your professors, extremely easy. You will have a network of people all around the country and in some occasions around the world. And you will be able to maintain this network long after you’ve completed your program. We’re finding that students are really making the connections that we thought they would.
You will be able to do something online that you can’t do on campus – in the on-campus program, which is you can go back and look at the archived material from previous courses, from previous modules in the class that you’re in. When something strikes you and you don’t wanna rely just on your notes. You wanna go back and see that particular lecturette or see that demonstration. We think that ability to archive really is part of what helps.But the learning is phenomenal online. Because in the on-campus program, when you come to class for three hours, the class works and moves at a particular pace. And you’re actually able to cover far greater material and far greater depths in the exact same time because you are working on it at your pace. You’ll be working in groups and working with your colleagues and your cohorts. But a lot of the work you will be doing on your own at your own pace. We think that’s an extraordinary advantage of online learning.
So with that, let me introduce you to one of our alums who took my online class. So although when T. J. Stevko went through the program, we only had one online class. He has an idea of what you’ll be going through. It was a joy to have T. J. in my life and in my class. And he has been an extraordinary alum for us. He reaches out to our students. He talks to my consultants ______ class. And I’m just delighted that you’re gonna get to meet him. He works in HR communication consulting. He works on benefits, on wellness, on mergers and acquisitions. And I know that he’s going to tell you that in more detail. So rather than hear about him, I think you probably want to hear from him. T. J, welcome to our online webinar.
T.J. Stevko: Hi. Thank you, Dr. Weintraub. And, hi, everyone. Nice to talk to you today. So I think we’ll just start off with what is HR coms consulting? Because it’s definitely something I didn’t know existed until I took the courses at Annenberg. In fact, when I signed up for the course at Annenberg – or the program, I wanted to work in entertainment. And that’s a pretty big shift from wanting to do that to end up working in corporate communication or HR consulting. And I got that through taking the courses, specifically the online course that Dr. Weintraub mentioned.
But what’s good about this is HR communication consulting pretty much it uses a lot of the foundations of communication, like messaging, strategy, tactics that you would use in something like marketing and PR; but for our clients, we focus it internally. So we’re talking to our clients about their benefits, wellness program, compensation, mergers and acquisitions, retirement, change implementation. So it really kinda runs the board as far as everything from as exciting or as interesting as a merger and acquisition to, hey, we’re rolling out a new email program. What’s the system that gets people – how do we communicate that change so people can use it effectively?
So there’s a lot of interaction with clients. Each situation is different, and that’s what keeps it really interesting and on my toes for me. And it – so next slide please. So how did this contribute to my professional life? Well, I think there’s a few things I wanna say. When I came to Annenberg, like I said, I wanted to start in entertainment. But then through the diversity of course work and sort of giving it the old college try for lack of a better term, I decided to try Dr. Weintraub’s online consulting course and really took to it right away, really liked it, and was able to take some more consulting courses and get that sort of real world com-strategy experience that she was talking about.
And this picture on the screen is actually from the final project that we did for one of Dr. Weintraub’s consulting courses. The people in the back are – they’re in my group. And the people in the front were the doctors. We did a communications strategy, internal and external, for a small medical facility in Los Angeles; and we got hooked up with that through someone in the group. And that was really great, because that was a real life experience. We went out as the consultants, and we created this portfolio with recommendations that we were able to use with this group; and this medical facility was able to use it.
And then we were also able to – I was able to take that to my job interview when I started at my company and show them something that – hey, this is what I’ve done in the area of change implementation; and you can see that I do have kind of the tactics and tools to kinda get started on that.Another thing, too, you keep coming back to is whenever you work in communication, it’s always back to the strategy. And there’s a lot of courses you take at Annenberg that really hammer home that point as far as the foundation and what you have to focus on and what is important and how you communicate it to people. And kinda boil it down to what’s the essence of what you’re trying to do no matter what the situation is or how many audiences they have.
And the other thing that, also, Dr. Weintraub touched upon was the alumni networks and internships. When I decided that I wanted to explore more areas of HR consulting, I was able to get a couple of internships while I was here in that field. I was also able to network with some alumni who work in that area over to different consulting firms and was really able to kinda talk to them and to figure out what their career was like and if that was something that I was interested in. And that really has been a contributing – was a strong factor to where I’m at today. I still keep in touch with a lot of those alumni and people that I met through that point.
So I think that kinda touches on the main points I have for now. I’ll be able to answer any questions, I think, after the presentation if you have any.Geoff Kass: Very good. Thank you, T. J. I appreciate your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Weintraub and T. J. will both be available to participate in a Q&A session in a little while. Please remember you can type in your questions in the Q&A box at any time.Now, I’d like to take the time to introduce you to Jordan Beck. Jordan is the Lead Instructional Designer for the online MCM program. And he’ll be providing you with a glimpse of the environment that online students get to enjoy. Hello, Jordan, let me thank you for joining us. And I’m going to turn over control of the presentation to you.
Jordan Beck: Thank you, Geoff. Well, the student experience in the online MCM program is definitely a robust and diverse one. And as you’ve probably heard numerous mentioned already of the importance of the network, it all begins with the academic community. They’re the community area built into the MCM program’s custom learning management system. And it’ll probably look familiar to those of you who are avid social networkers already. And for those of you that aren’t, this will be a great introduction to social networking through an academic lens.
You’ll have a profile page, which you can personalize with an image and some snippets of biographical information. Additionally, your profile page will list your course enrollments, both past and present. So this means you will be able to connect seamlessly with your colleagues in those courses as well as other students in the MCM network who have taken your courses in the past.
You’ll also have a status update feature as well as a wall. And the wall functions just like a Facebook wall. Students and faculty in your network will leave comments on your wall. They’ll post links. Additionally, it’ll serve as a – it’ll pull general updates from course-specific news forums. So if the instructor has an update for the entire class, he or she can post it in the course space and your wall will display the update – kind of like a news feed.You’ll also have an individual blog, which you might use for assignments, for journaling, or just another means of communicating and collaborating with your cohort.
And finally, you’ll be able to view all the students and faculty in your network, separated into two categories: students and faculty – just like Google-plus circles. So we found that this mitigates the frustration that comes with sifting through a huge network to find the individual that you’re looking to get in touch with.
Courses, themselves, are designed to offer you diverse academic experience while still providing those cornerstone features you’ve come to expect from any quality academic experience. They all begin with a general section. And here is where you’ll find the course syllabus as well as an overview page, which will contain either a video or podcast introduction from your instructor. You’ll also find tools for collaboration and class-wide communication here. There will be a news forum for general updates and announcements by the instructor, as well as a discussion forum for you to ask questions and provide feedback throughout the course.
Most instructors do hold office hours through Google Chat, so you’ll definitively have an opportunity to interact with faculty on a regular basis. As you dive into specific weeks, you’ll see that all the course content has been designed and organized with specific learning objectives in mind. So at the outset of every week, you’ll have a concrete list of applicable skills which you will be able to demonstrate by the week’s end. A given week will also contain a video or podcast introduction from the instructor and these videos will help frame the content for the coming week and bridge the gap from the previous week’s contents.
And then while that course setup is familiar, you’ll find your course experience to be super robust. Some weeks might involve substantially synchronous discussions on one or more discussion boards. Other weeks might exploit wiikeys as a means of leveraging collective intelligence to find a solution to a problem. And still others might make use of multi-media knowledge tools to bolster or assess course content. Some weeks, it might be a mix of all those; and they might include even more.
There are individual assignments. There are group papers, case studies; some of which leverage multi-media knowledge tools themselves. There are quizzes, analytical writing opportunities, experiential learning. There’s discussions and exams. In short, you can expect to be challenged; and you can expect to grow.I wanna take the last few minutes of my time to expand just a bit on the customized multi-media knowledge tools in the online MCM program. And these are tailor-made per course, per learning objective. Right now I’m gonna speak about an interactive simulation. So a little background. The star-model method of organizational analysis is a prominent topic in managing communication. And this simulation, actually, extends over several weeks. So in it, you assume the role of a consultant, analyzing an organization according to the star model. And you provide recommendations to a supervisor based on your analysis.
Similar to a case study, the background information you need to process before you can begin the actual simulation is presented dynamically in an animated presentation with audio. And when you go through any of these simulations, you’ll be able to view a transcript of the audio if you need to. And all the multi-media has a PDF transcript available for download on the course page itself.
The great thing about this particular simulation is that it’s personalized. So before you can begin, you log in with your first and last name. And then all incoming communication to you and all outgoing communication from you is personalized. The first thing you see when you dive in is an email chain between your supervisor and the CEO of a company called Criterion SGX. It’s a sporting goods company undergoing major organizational changes. And your supervisor asks the CEO questions based on the star model and forwards her responses to you for analysis. So it’s up to you to analyze her answers relative to the other dimensions of the star model and recommend the best path of action.
The feedback is highly customized. The best answer or answers you choose are affirmed. Inadequate recommendations are corrected. And answers you should have picked are called out. Each simulation culminates with a progress report recapping the week’s milestones and forecasting the next tasks. And in short, the interactive media in USC’s online MCM program is engaging, it’s fun, and it’s highly educational.With that, I’ll thank you for your time and attention and relinquish control back to you, Geoff.
Geoff Kass: Excellent. Thank you very much, Jordan. Ladies and gentlemen, Jordan will also be available during the Q&A session. Now I’d like to introduce you to Mark, who’s gonna take a few minutes to walk you through what you can expect and explain his role as your advocate throughout the process.
Mark Karkoska: Thank you, Geoff. Good morning everyone, and thank you Dr. Weintraub, T. J., and Jordan. I wanted to spend a few minutes just going over the admission requirements for the Master’s of Communication Management program here at USC Annenberg. The application is available online at USC’s graduate application website.
Now we are looking for a minimum of undergraduate GPA of 3.0 from an accredited university. We require updated, professional resume, which needs to be uploaded directly into your online application file. In addition, we do require one of the following two standardized tests: either the GRE with a minimum composite score of 1,000, and also keep in mind the new GRE score standard will be released shortly, and a GMAT with a minimum score of 650.
We require the following documents for admission into the program: Your statement of purpose or letter of intent, one writing sample, two letters of recommendation, and all of your official transcripts from your previous college and university that you attended. Also, I wanted to clarify when filling out your online application, you wanna specify the program as the Master’s of Communication Management program, MCM online option.Now opening up an application at USC is a process. And as your first step in moving forward with your education and completing your master’s degree, application files can be completed in as little as a week. But most application files take longer. There are several steps that take longer to complete than others. So there’s definitely a desired approach to take when completing your online application.
The rest of the admissions team and I are committed to assisting all applicants navigate through this process as seamlessly as possible and ultimately assisting you in putting together the strongest possible application for your review. However, without an open dialogue with us, we’re not gonna be able to assist you the best of our ability. We know that no one wants to start the application process and not get the desired result, so don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions either about specific – your specific application or the program itself.
Going back to school is a big decision, and we look forward to assisting you through the process every step of the way. And I would encourage all applicants to contact myself, Brad, or Daniel directly with specific questions regarding their application so we can address those on an individual basis. Thanks.
Geoff Kass: Excellent. Thank you, Mark. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for our Q&A. I’m going to open up these questions to our entire team of panelists. I’ll try to direct them if I can. At any point in time if any of our panelists feel that they can contribute to the question, please feel free to jump right in. It looks like the first question we have here has to do with the online program and how it’s different from the one on campus. I think maybe I’ll direct that one to you Dr. Weintraub.
Dr. Weintraub: Happy to answer it. There are two major changes – not changes, differences. One is the online program is only for working professionals. So the minimum number of years of work experience full time after the bachelor’s degree is three years of work experience. And so that changes the nature of the program in and of itself.
The second difference is the online program focuses on marketing and organizational and strategic communication. So in the on-campus program, we have other areas that students can take, but those are often ones that we have found that working professionals are not really particularly interested in. Because they are already along the line of their career path, and they want to get more depth; and they wanna learn what’s cutting edge around those. And those tend to be marketing, organizational, and strategic communication.
The last difference is you cannot get through the on-campus program in as short a time as you can in the online program. Because the online program is built around three 12-week semesters a year, and you have to go to all of them. Whereas the on-campus program is two 15-week semesters a year and an optional, much shorter, summer session. Back to you.
Geoff Kass: Excellent. Thank you very much. We have a question here that I think I’ll break up into two parts. Although the program is online, does the department have any requirements to be on campus at any time during the program?
Dr. Weintraub: No, we don’t. We’d love to see you. We, actually, had some visitors at homecoming from the online program, which was very exciting for us; and I think for her. But you do not ever have to come to campus, although, I personally hold a very strong hope that when I’m handing out diplomas at commencement, I will be handing out diplomas to the online students as well. And before you ask the question, yes, it is the exact same degree; the exact same diploma. Nothing on the diploma says online.
Geoff Kass: Excellent. You read my mind. That was, in fact, the second part of the question. We have a question from one of our attendees. What is the last day that the college transcripts can arrive if it’s the very last piece of the application to be considered for admissions?
Dr. Weintraub: I think that’s yours or Neal.
Geoff Kass: I think that might be Mark or Neal.
Neal: I can take that. So we have an admission deadline of November 30, for spring term, which starts in January. In order to calculate your GPA, we have to have your transcripts. If you have all of your material submitted, if you have some of your transcripts submitted by November 30, if the majority of your application is ready to go by November 30, we can usually wait a couple of weeks for another transcript to come in so we can do the calculation on your GPA and still consider you for a spring semester start in January.
I would urge you to check with an enrollment advisor about what the status of your application process is – if you’ve submitted your test scores, if you have your letters of recommendation, your statement of purpose. If you have the majority of materials ready, including some of your transcripts but you’re still waiting on getting one or maybe two more, we can work with that. But the deadline for admission for this term, for spring, is November 30.Geoff Kass: Excellent, Neal, thank you. Dr. Weintraub, I think I’ll direct this one to you. We have a couple of applicants who are concerned about the GRE requirement. As a working professional, they know it’s difficult to find time to study for the exam. However, they have a master’s in French, a master’s in Journalism, also been in PR for the last ten years. Are there any opportunities for waivers of the GRE requirement?
Dr. Weintraub: We don’t waive the GRE. We think that it’s important for students to take it. Now that said, I encourage you not to panic and not to let that dissuade you. First of all, what we know about working professionals is, A) the longer they’ve been out of the program – I mean out of school, the worse their test-taking ability, which is why we allow you to take the test as many times as you feel you need to. And we take the highest score for each of the three segments.
We do expect that people who have been working in communication will have a good writing score. We expect they’ll have a good verbal score. We understand that for most communicators, math was not their strong suite. And so we don’t expect those scores to be as high. But probably even more important for you than that is that the application process looks beyond your GRE and your GPA.
If you’ve been in graduate school, we have that record. If you’ve been working for ten years, we have that record. We can look at your work experience. We have a lot more material to evaluate in terms of your application. So as a tier-one research university, one of the top masters in communication programs in the country, we think that the GRE is an important element. But the working professional, it is my no means a major element, and please don’t let that dissuade you.
Geoff Kass: Thank you. We have a question about the statement of purpose. Is there a minimum length that you recommend?Dr. Weintraub: We – that’s an interesting question. I would say that you ought to be able to tell us why you are the right person for this program, and we are the right program for you, in two typewritten pages. We don’t need a book, but I don’t think in half a page you can tell us enough. There’s one question that I saw of the panelists that I would like to answer if I may.
Geoff Kass: Absolutely.
Dr. Weintraub: And that is that would this be useful for government communication? And the answer is an unequivocal yes. We currently have, in the first cohort, a public affairs officer who is going through the program and has already expressed how much this has helped the work that he does. Because organizational communication is organizational communication. I happen to do a lot of strategic communication work with the Department of Defense and the Navy. And so I know that the government has different specific issues than you have in the business world. But the fundamental course of those issues tends to remain the same because organizations are organizations and people are people. I’ll pass it back to you.
Geoff Kass: Excellent.
Neal: Geoff, I had a clarification to make about the admissions deadline. I had stated that you would have some time. I want to, actually, put a firm date on that. November 30 is our deadline to have the application started and to have most of your materials, like your statement of purpose, letters of recommendation, things of those nature turned in. If you are waiting on a transcript or something of that nature to be received by our office, you’ll have at least until December 9 to have those materials submitted so that you can be considered for spring admission.
Geoff Kass: Neal, thank you for the clarification.
Dr. Weintraub: By the way, there’s a question about the GPA; and so here’s what the GPA tells us. One of the things we discovered, and we knew this from the working professionals that came to the on-campus program and have since the program began in the early ‘70s, is that some of you had too much fun in your undergraduate years. But if you’ve been working for a number of years and you’ve been in progressively more responsible work, we know that the GPA only tells us so much. So don’t let that not allow you to apply.
What I will tell you is if your undergraduate GPA is below the university minimum of 3.0 and you did not have another graduate degree, we will still be able to admit you if you have a good GRE and you’ve got all that work experience and such that I talked about. But you will be brought in as a conditional admitant. Your professors don’t know that. Nobody knows that except the advisors and the director – that’s me. And so if you get B averages in your first two classes and you do good work and you get good recommendations from your instructor, which we ask at the end of the semester, then you are moved from conditional to full enrollment. So don’t let that concern you.
Geoff Kass: Excellent. Thank you. I have a couple of questions about the courses and about the programming curriculum itself. One question is will there be opportunities in the curriculum to leverage digital and mobile marketing techniques and strategies? And the second part of that, are there other types of elective courses that may be taken?
Dr. Weintraub: There will be some electives as the program rolls out. You will learn mobile strategies and digital strategies in a number of your classes. And over time, we will be adding more and more electives. So beginning in the fall, we will be adding a new elective on communicating in work setting, which is more of a micro-organizational communication class and looks at organizational communication, theoretical construction, what that means in terms of supervisory-subordinate communication, and communication at the – whereas managing communication is more macro, this is more micro.So we will be seeding in new classes, and students will start to have a little bit more choice over time. There was a question about the summer cohort, and we will have a summer cohort; but Neal will have to be the one that tells you the application deadline.
Neal: The application deadline for summer cohort will be in the middle of April. I believe it’s April 16. So there will be a summer cohort, and there will be an admission’s process and deadline for that in mid-April.
Geoff Kass: Very good. Thank you. Can we talk a little bit about what the expectations for study time and homework time will be during the week? Some of the marketing materials indicate it could be from 15 to 25 hours. Does that include the actual online course participation?Dr. Weintraub: Yes, it does but – and the online course participation time will be highly individualized. It will change by class. It might even change by week module. The amount of work that you put in, you need to put in, is highly individualized. Some people have found that it works better for them to go back over material; to go through it once rapidly and then go back over it in more depth as they’re working particular issues.
You will find that the reading will be incredibly important and valuable. You’ll find that you’re using what you’re studying in your job. So although I think that number is fairly representative, like it is in our on-campus program, it’s a very individualized element; because a lot of it depends on your study style and your own personal intellectual process.
Geoff Kass: Excellent. Thank you. This question might be addressed by any or all of Jordan, Neal, or Dr. Weintraub. Since the program began, you’ve mentioned that you’ve gotten some very positive, very strong, feedback from the participants so far. Specific to technical computer issues, have you heard any feedback about what that experience has been like? Have you seen any technical difficulties that anybody has run into as they started the program?
Dr. Weintraub: There were certainly a few challenges when we began the program, because this cohort that’s finishing up is our first. And they have been extremely patient and helpful in suggestions on what would make things easier, what’s missing, what they’re using the most. So we think that the second cohort is gonna find a much smoother transition. But what we are finding is that the learning management system that we’re using is very user-friendly and allows us to do quite a number of fun elements.
Some of your classes will have live sessions. And we do that through a technology called ______. And one of the classes, Managing Communications, uses that more than some of the others. And Dr. Stevens, the instructor, has said that the students are liking it so much they’re asking for more. They really enjoy it. They really appreciate it. She says that the discussions have been as good, if not much better, than the kinds of discussions she gets in her live classes.
So the technology is very robust. We have certainly worked to improve it, and I know we will continue to improve it as we go. But we think it’s a pretty strong learning management system.
Neal: I’ll add to that a little bit. So we’ve had a lot of students who have come in with different levels of experience and knowledge about technology, whether it was social media, whether it was applications like PowerPoint or how to use – upload a video to YouTube. So many of our students have had different learning curves when coming to the program.
But what we’ve found is in the few first weeks of class when – since we’re learning how to use the LMS, they relied on each other. They relied on a 24-7 support network that we have for our students. So we have a lot of technical expertise available for them to reach out to. And our faculty pitched in, too. So when we have our cohort now finishing their first semester, they seem very proficient in the technology. And we’ve made sure that we’ve added additional tutorials for orientation that every student takes in the program so that this new cohort that comes in in the spring will have learned and benefited from what our first cohort told us.
Geoff Kass: Excellent. Thank you, Neal.
[Crosstalk]
Dr. Weintraub: There’s one question I wanna answer really quick. Somebody asked about the Annenberg program and online communities. Despite its name, that is an on-campus program. It is part of the on-campus Communication Management program, and it is only taught on campus; and it begins in January. So I just wanted to give a quick answer to that.
Geoff Kass: Great. Thank you. A couple of questions, actually, about spring 2012. We have an attendee who would like to know when notifications, acceptance notifications, are occurring for spring of 2012?
Neal: At this point, there are ongoing. We are actively reviewing files that have come in that have been submitted to us already. We have some students who have already been admitted, so between now and the beginning of January, all of the admission notices will be sent out.Geoff Kass: Thank you. Along those same lines, do you have an approximate timeframe that it takes to make an admissions decision once an application is complete. And along those lines, do
Neal: I can answer the transcripts question, and I’ll let Rebecca answer the review question. The transcripts – as soon as we receive them in our office, they are processed and translated into a GPA calculation. That process takes a matter of days. I would say you probably would get GPA calculation delivered to the admission committee based on your transcripts within a handful of days – no more than five days.
Dr. Weintraub: Our team works to have a 20-day turnaround from the time we have a complete file. But a complete file means a complete file. Now we have all of the letters of recommendation. We have the GRE and the GPA and the transcript. We have the statement of purpose. So once we have all of that, we move pretty quickly on it because we know people are anxious to hear the answer.
Geoff Kass: Excellent. Thank you very much. At this time, I would like to thank our panelists for participating in this Q&A. Ladies and gentlemen, the time we have left is designed specifically to take advantage of the full hour you’ve probably blocked on your calendar for this event, to provide you the opportunity to reach out to one of our advisors at the contact information on your screen. We encourage you to use this remaining time to call Mark, Bradley, or Daniel to discuss your goals, your concerns, and to start an application.
If you’ve already started a process, this is an excellent opportunity to find out what you should do next. The deadline for spring 2012 term is coming up soon as Neal said. So there’s no better time to reach out and continue down the path towards your career goals.
Our advisors will also have a PDF of this event and the recording should be available within the next few days. Again, I would like to thank you for your time and for your participation. Again, extend a word to thanks to all our panelists today; and I hope everybody has a good day.
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