The School of Media and Journalism has appointed Dr. Brad Rawlins to be its director on a permanent basis after Rawlins served as interim director for the past year. 

Rawlins

The School of Media and Journalism was formed in 2019 and Rawlins holds previous administrative experience. He was the vice rector for A-State’s Campus in Queretaro, Mexico and Rawlins was previously the dean of the College of Media and Communication. 

With the coronavirus pandemic still affecting the A-State community and the world as a whole, Rawlins has been appointed director during a strange and difficult time. However, he said he believes the School of Media and Journalism’s faculty has done a good job adjusting. 

“Our faculty was a little bit better prepared to teach online and handle some of the difficulties,” Rawlins said. “I think in part that’s also because our faculty have really good relationships with students. Our faculty know the students, know them by name and know what they need. I have actually been pleasantly surprised.” 

Of course, there have still been small hiccups like internet outages that come with online instruction. The biggest challenge for the school has been the lack of face-to-face communication. Email, Zoom meetings and texting are all methods of communication being put to use right now to keep everyone up to date.

“It’s not the same,” Rawlins said. “It’s just not the same as being together.”

The two degree programs in the School of Media and Journalism are multimedia journalism and creative media production. Rawlins said he wants the two programs to be more collaborative with each other and for the two programs to collaborate with other programs outside of the school. 

The school also houses KASU and Printing Services, two more assets that hold potential collaborative opportunities. Student media like The Herald, ASU-TV, Red Wolf Radio and Delta Digital News all create opportunities for students.

“So trying to find more synergy across those units and programs is one of the major goals that we have,” Rawlins said. “(We also) want to increase the profile of the school throughout the state and the region as one of the top programs in the country for journalism and creative media production. To strengthen our ties with alumni (is another goal).”

A strategic plan committee made up of the school’s professors started creating a strategic plan this year to work towards that synergy Rawlins wants. However, with the coronavirus wreaking havoc on everyone’s plans, a timeline for the desired synergy has not been created. 

One aspect of increasing the profile of the multimedia journalism program is accreditation. The school’s program is up for accreditation this year and that brings its own set of challenges to the table. 

“It means a lot,” Rawlins said. “It means our program meets the standard that’s set by the accrediting council for education in journalism and mass communication. Those standards are set by our colleagues around the country as well as professionals.”

Accreditation tells everyone from students, to faculty and professionals that the program is a quality journalism program.

The challenges brought to the accreditation process are not challenges necessarily unique to A-State, but they are challenges seen by programs across the country. 

“Those are going to be challenges of resources and challenges in enrollment,” Rawlins said. “There have been sharp declines in journalism enrollment around the country. We have some plans in place to address those.”

Despite an enrollment decline and the potential for less resources, Rawlins said he thinks the multimedia journalism program has everything else in place to make the program really successful because of the faculty and students who are engaged. 

The creative media production side of the school has been tweaking parts of its curriculum with advice from an advisory board made up of creative media production professionals.

“I think they’re doing a very good job moving forward,” Rawlins said. “They are interacting well with their advisory board. They take the lead from their advisory board to get ideas about how to improve the program. They’ve taken the right steps toward those programs.”

With revenue down in Arkansas at the state level, the state has made public institutions cut their budgets. Areas in the School of Media and Journalism experienced budget cuts as well as many different areas across campus. 

“I think we were very good stewards of our budget this year,” Rawlins said. “For the most part I don’t think it’s going to impact us too much. I think challenges moving forward, particularly in the area of journalism, is how do you reduce costs of production, how do you become more of an online first publication and learning how to operate that way.”

How A-State plans to operate in the fall is still up in the air and the School of Media and Journalism currently plans to follow the university’s lead on how it will operate come the fall semester.

“The university’s plan is we’re planning to have face-to-face courses,” Rawlins said. “We don’t know what for sure that’s going to look like. We don’t know if we’re going to have some social distancing as part of our planning in face-to-face classes in the fall.”

The backup plan for the fall is online classes and discussions are starting about how labs will be used next semester.

As the future ahead for A-State is a bit cloudy, Rawlins is ready to take on the challenge. 

After coming back from his time in Mexico, Rawlins went on a sabbatical in the spring of 2019 to work on research and get ready for the classroom. He expected to come back from his sabbatical teaching full time, but instead he ended up as interim director of the School of Media and Journalism and now permanent director. 

“I’m always energized by challenges,” Rawlins said. “I see a lot of potential for the school moving forward and I wanted to continue to be a part of that effort.”

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