When Brook Corwin graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2004 with a double major in journalism and history, his career path was clear. With a few journalism internships already under his belt, Corwin quickly found a job, starting out as a staff reporter at the Tribune of Elkin/Jonesville, then moving on to become associate editor at the Surry Messenger in Mount Airy.
But in the five years that Corwin, 29, worked as journalist, he saw rapid changes in the industry.
“Working in print, it was easy to see how things were moving towards digital communication,” he says.
He realized that to stay competitive he needed to learn more about digital communication, so he started researching graduate school programs in the area. One of the first places he looked was Elon University.
“I knew the school already had a well-established communications program and that it had good resources,” he says.
He found that Elon was in the beginning stages of launching a master’s degree in interactive media, developed to give students the skills to plan and create communication pieces combining text, photos, audio, video and graphics. In 2009, Corwin started the program as one of 36 students in the first class.
Corwin liked that he could complete his master’s degree in just 10 months.
“One of the biggest appeals for me was that the program was just a year long and was intensive,” Corwin says. “I wanted to get back to work as soon as possible.”
Planners designed the program that way so students could leave with the latest skills in new technology. “This world is changing so quickly that we want to make sure our students leave with cutting-edge skills,” says David Copeland, a professor with the school of communications and its graduate studies director. “Usually, it would take a full-time student two years to complete a master’s program, but if we did that, by the time they graduated, their skills would be out of date.”
Classes are offered during the day Monday through Friday, and students must attend full-time. Elon created a technology lab that meets the needs of the highly demanding program, providing 24-hour access to computers, editing suites and multimedia and software tools needed to develop online communication pieces. Copeland says that “students are often here in the morning to well into the night,” as they attend classes and work on projects.
Students are required to complete two student programs outside the classroom. One, called a “fly-in” internship, is a group project in which students travel to a foreign country for a week to work with a nonprofit organization. Corwin’s group of eight students went to Panama to help a health organization build its first website.
“It was one of those experiences that you can prepare for, but until you are there and meeting the people and seeing what their situation is, you can’t really design for them,” he says. “As you see an organization’s limits and the messages they want to get out, the notion of what you want to create changes.”
In the spring, students work on an individual project. By the end of the program, graduates have at least two finished media pieces to add to their portfolios.
In May, a day after he graduated from the program, Corwin had a job offer from UNCG. In August, he began working at the school’s Division of Continual Learning as an instructional technology consultant. One of his primary duties is to develop online courses.
“I like the creativity involved and I also like that all our efforts go towards education,” he says.
