Professor Richard Schaefer has sponsored broadcast journalism programs throughout North America, and now some of his students are covering President Obama's inauguration.
Five undergraduate and graduate Communication and Journalism students traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 9 to be immersed in inaugural celebrations and political functions.
Christina Lovato, a senior majoring in journalism and Spanish, said she interviewed the likes of Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the iconic "Hope" poster, and Hayden Panettiere, an actress in the NBC show "Heroes."
"It's going to have a really big impact on my future," Lovato said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to talk to the people that we're talking to, making these contacts and just giving us the experience of being a hardcore journalist."
Millions of Americans traveled to Washington to see Obama sworn in, and Lovato said the people she's interviewed have all been optimistic.
"Right now, it's just been really emotional," she said of the inauguration atmosphere. "You can walk down the street and everyone's really excited. No one is yelling at each other. No one's mad."
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Lovato and her four colleagues are interning all semester for Talk Radio News Service, a national radio news provider, as part of a program implemented in part by Schaefer and President David Schmidly's office.
"For us, it's a good thing because the students get to go to Washington, D.C. They get very good access to high-level sources there," Schaefer said. "I anticipate that they'll get the kind of experience that we just can't offer them."
Schaefer said he plans for the program to continue regularly, and he's been sending students to southern Mexico for the last two years as part of a similar program.
"It's called cross-border interest group, and we are trying to bring perspectives back to the U.S., to people in the U.S. who don't normally get those perspectives through the news media," he said.
Lovato traveled to Cuernavaca and Chiapas with Schaefer and the other participants before hearing about the internship in Washington.
Schaefer said programs like the one in Mexico provide journalism students insight from primary sources on issues like immigration.
"It also forces them to do a different kind of journalism where they understand that they have to be patient," he said. "It's a linguistic challenge. It's a cultural challenge. It's a journalistic challenge, and I think it changes me. I hope it changes the people who go on these programs, too."
