The School of Visual Communication offers an interdisciplinary degree with five specialized sequences. The program is designed to provide students with realistic and

thorough broad-based professionally oriented training in visual communication, while providing the necessary liberal arts and cultural background for a strong educational foundation.

Intensive training is offered in photojournalism for newspapers and magazines, picture editing, photo illustration, interactive multimedia, and informational graphics/publication design.

The goals of the School of Visual Communication are (1) to equip students with the necessary skills to be successful in the media, and the background and motivation to enable them to

compete for leadership roles in the field; (2) to provide assistance and professional guidance in visual communication to working photographers, editors, and other personnel together with newspapers, press services, magazines, industrial photographic departments, trade associations, multimedia and educational media production units, and cultural and scientific visual communicators; (3) to set high standards for visual integrity and communication ethics; and (4) to foster and promote scholarly research and creative activity among our students.

Derived from our mission statement and our roots in the School of Art and School of Journalism, the school’s curriculum is interdisciplinary requiring core classes in three schools; Visual Communication, Art and Journalism. Over the last five years the curriculum has evolved with changes in the profession. Sources of curricular assessment include feedback from students, analysis of competing programs, and input from working professionals.

With only six faculty members VisCom is able to quickly fine-tune curriculum when the need arises. The faculty has designed the following elements in the school’s curriculum:

• Writing skills — Essays and/or reports are required in all classes (including technical skills courses)

• Verbal Skills — In addition to researching and writing reports, students are required to make oral presentations of their findings. They are also required to participate in class critiques.

• Computer literacy — None of our majors will flourish professionally without solid computer skills. To meet this need all 300 level and above courses include a computer lab component.

• Ethics component — The easy access to digital technology has made ethical considerations increasingly important to visual communicators. This fact has prompted our faculty to place renewed emphasis on ethical discussions and classroom exercises.

• Technical mastery — As a professional program technical skills are always present in classroom instruction and assignments.

• Visual creativity — All professional course grading includes a visual creativity score to ensure aesthetic growth and development.

• Critical thinking — Technical skills are not enough to ensure good employment opportunities for our graduates. Employers demand the ability to make quick intelligent decisions. Each course has a realistic problem-solving component. The student is required to determine their own creative approach to class assignments.

To monitor and assess student progress the School of Visual Communication has utilized a wide variety of assessment tools:

Charting of Student employment success

Student academic achievement

Alumni accomplishment

Quarterly faculty roundtable discussion to assess individual class successes and disappointments.

A faculty juried student show (first one was hung in April, 1998)

Capstone projects in three of five sequences (photo communication, page design & multimedia) involving 90% of all VisCom majors

School-wide student projects offered outside of the classroom environment encourage crossover between the school’s major sequences. These projects offer students an opportunity to work in a team on an active learning project.

All classes above the 300 level require portfolio submission at the completion of the class.

VisCom tracks student successes in major student and professional competitions to gauge the intellectual and creative skills of our past and present students.

Professional experience — Students are required to complete a paid professional internship before they graduate.

Exposure to professional trends — Each quarter professional visual communicators are invited to address our students both in and out of classroom environments. These professionals are asked to appraise student work.

One of the largest websites on the university’s network (over 1500 pages) is a public forum for discussion and feedback on student work.

Institutional research compendium data is used together with departmental assessment surveys.

Starting with the incoming freshman class (1998-99) all students will be asked to complete a questionnaire assessing their expectations, surveying why they selected Ohio University and the School of Visual Communication.

Exit interviews — Informal exit interviews with small groups of graduating seniors and graduate students have been used in the past to gauge program success. Starting with the graduating class of 1999 all seniors and graduate students will participate in a formal interview with the school director.

Alumni are periodically surveyed by the office of institutional research.

VisCom maintains an area on our website to showcase former student’s work and achievements.

(see: http://www.viscom.ohiou.edu/alumni/home.html)

The College Photographer of the Year contest is the premiere college photo contest in the United States. The contest is in its 50th year and is sponsored by The University of Missouri School of Journalism, Canon USA and Eastman Kodak.

For two years in a row The School of Visual Communication has won more awards in this contest than any other school in the United States. This year VisCom students won 28 awards which amounted to 30% of all the awards. Included in the awards was the College Photographer of the Year and three of the five awards in the portfolio category. (see addendum # 1)

The Pictures of the Year competition is open to professional photographers around the world. Student photographers can enter, but rarely win. This year two VisCom graduate students won awards in this prestigious contest.

The Macromedia Software Company, creators of Freehand, Director, Shockwave, and other industry standard software, highlights the work of School of Visual Communication students on their website.

(See: http://www.macromedia.com/software/freehand/gallery/edgallery/ohio/index.html)

VisCom student winners in this annual contest for college students majoring in Photojournalism took:

8th place in Competition I

11th place in Competition II

11th place in Competition III

11th place in Competition III

The VisCom website encompasses over 1500 pages (http://www.viscom.ohiou.edu). It includes all the schoolwide cross-discipline projects (Dawn to Dusk in Nelsonville, Dawn to Dusk in Athens and Halloween 96) plus over 30 student portfolios and resumes. Class notes for over a half a dozen classes are on the web providing students with immediate access to class information.

One student received an internship offer from a newspaper to which they had not applied after the student’s work was viewed on the VisCom website.

The School of Visual Communication maintains a searchable internship database with over 440 entries. The database will be added to our website this summer to provide students with the option of searching the database at anytime from anywhere they have internet access.

VisCom requires a paid internship of all students. Approximately 50 graduate and undergraduate students need internships each calendar year. With the placement assistance of the faculty, VisCom students completed 87 internships in the last calendar year. This exceeds by 57% the number needed by graduating students. These internships were in 22 different states, the District of Columbia and one in Finland.

Outstanding skills make our students very desirable in the workplace as indicated by these placement figures. (Please see addendum #3.)

A graduate student won first place in the photorealistic images category of this international student design contest. The student's work will be displayed on the Adobe website (http://www.adobe.com) in July.

Students are chosen for this national workshop by portfolio review by a committee of working professionals. VisCom had six students chosen for the 1997 workshop.

One student was chosen as outstanding workshop participant, and another student was awarded an internship in the photo department of The White House based on his/her performance in the workshop.

Fifty college sports journalists are selected from across the nation to participate in this workshop conducted by professional sports journalists.

VisCom had three students selected.

The Knight Foundation, established by the Knight-Ridder media corporation, awarded a $250,000 grant to The School of Visual Communication to establish the Knight Fellowship in newsroom graphics management.

This fellowship, the only one of its kind in the United States, has brought to campus some outstanding mid-career professionals as graduate fellows.

The pinnacle of a professional journalist’s career is to win a Pulitzer Prize. This year’s Pulitzer Prize in spot news photography was awarded to a VisCom graduate of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. VisCom has a strong Pulitzer presence in our school’s faculty and students.

$28,489 from internal and external sources was awarded to VisCom students in 1998.

                                             - 1 - $1,500.00 Scholarship

                                             - 5 - $1,000.00 Scholarships

                                             - 1 - $300.00 Scholarship

Enrollment Figures (from Institutional Research Compendium Reports)

Undergraduate headcount by major:

1992 - 104 1993 - 124 1994 - 152 1995 - 173 1996 - 205 1997 - 254

Program excellence has resulted in enrollment more than doubling in less than 6 years.

Graduate school applicants for 1998-99 academic year: 50 (22 admissions)

Increase from previous academic year - 70%

In June of 1998 VisCom conducted the first of an annual survey of student

The School of Visual Communication is constantly making an effort to improve the quality of education and opportunities available to our students. In an effort to improve even further we surveyed students to find out how we are doing and how they feel about their college education.

The survey asked them to rate things such as; internal communication, advising, school activities, their academic process and internship experiences.

The overal ratings are listed below and the full breakdown by class rank is included in addendum #2.

1% 33% 66%

3% 39% 57%

Have you participated in any of the VisCom special events and/or activities? (e.g. Dawn to Dusk, NPPA speakers, OUSND, Advising meetings, Communications Week, etc.)

Yes No

88% 12%

51% 49%

40% 60%

86% 14%

57% 43%

0% 18% 82%

Picture Editor, The Chicago Tribune

Photographer, The Chicago Tribune

Design Director, America Online

Pulitzer Prize winner, Photographer, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Digital Artist, Myst

National Geographic Staff Photographer

Photographer, Copley Newspapers (1998 Pulitzer finalist)

Design Director, The Detroit Free Press

Photographer, Block Newspapers (1998 Pulitzer finalist)

Staff Photographer, The Palm Beach Post

Staff Photographer, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

All programs will have capstone courses implemented within two years.

Freshmen expectation surveys will commence in the summer of 1998.

Graduate exit interviews will begin with 1998-99 graduates.

Rapid increase in enrollment numbers has placed burdens on faculty workload and class size. Measures to eleviate the overcrowding must be addressed with either increased resources or a ceiling on enrollment.

A renewed effort to encourage student participation in the advising process must be addressed.

This document is also available online at: http://www.viscom.ohiou.edu/viscom/asess97.html

Submitted by the Faculty of The School of Visual Communication.