Camp Carolina provides intense training for graduate program’s "rookie recruits"
Six-week summer term shapes incoming MMC students into tip-top form.

by Anna Saunders

Goodbye summer, hello boot camp.  For students entering the SJMC’s Master’s of Mass Communication program, July 7 marked the end of any lazy days of summer and the start of an intense six-week skills camp called Camp Carolina to prepare them for the rigorous graduate work ahead.

"At first I thought – all day classes for HOW many weeks? But no, it was a great experience," said Stacey Williamson, a 2006 MMC graduate now with the Charlotte public relations agency Corder Philips.  "Coming from a liberal-arts background, there were a lot of technical things that I didn't know about integrated communications."

The Camp Carolina name was inspired by "Camp Jackson," the former name of nearby Fort Jackson, the largest basic training site for the US Army’s rookie recruits. 

The condensed summer session allows incoming MMC students who don’t have a journalism or mass communications background to quickly acquire the basic skills and knowledge they’ll need to succeed in the professionally oriented graduate program.

In those six weeks of full-day sessions, the Camp Carolina students tackle the prerequisite coursework required for the graduate program.  This includes a survey of mass communications, writing for mass communications, copy editing, statistics, and sessions in reporting or integrated communications, depending on their intended area of specialization.

According to Dr. Erik Collins, the School’s associate director of graduate studies and research and the founding father of Camp Carolina, the MMC program seeks to attract the very best students, regardless of whether they have studied journalism or mass communications. 

"Our ideal recruit for the MMC is a 3.5 history major from Vanderbilt or an honors grad in engineering from Georgia Tech.  We’ll give them the knowledge and teach them the skills they need to succeed as a mass communications professional," Collins said. 

He explained that the idea for Camp Carolina came about when he and fellow administrators changed the MMC emphasis in 1994. Until then, the program had been designed for working professionals. 

"The problem was, young, already-working professionals could not take time out from their careers to get a master’s degree."

The decision to accept non-journalism majors into the program meant that the School needed to equip these students with basic skills.  

"We needed to bring incoming students up to speed without adding a full year of undergraduate courses to the Master’s program," Collins said. 

Thus, the concept of offering a summer "boot camp" for incoming students was born. Collins believed students entering the MMC program could master the basic communications skills in a condensed term because they would be older, more focused students who already have demonstrated academic excellence.  This has proven to be the case.

Camp Carolina "grads" enlist in service to the J-School

Take, for example, Brad Petit, a 2004 Tulane graduate who majored in psychology and French but decided to pursue journalism. Or Jamie Underwood, an English major from Rhodes College who discovered an interest in news reporting after she graduated.  

Both Petit and Underwood have excelled in the MMC program and have taken on assignments in the J-School. 

Petit was drafted in September to serve as the editor of The Convergence Newsletter, a monthly, online publication that is sponsored by Newsplex and has subscribers around the globe. Petit opens every issue with a preview of what’s inside.
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Petit attributes his writing know-how to print and electronic journalism professor Ernest Wiggins who teaches news reporting and copy editing in Camp Carolina.

"As someone who came in without a journalism background, it was invaluable learning about basic elements of reporting, interviewing, structure and the like. Going from mock interviews in the classroom with Professor Wiggins to real street reporting for the class Web site was a great way to build skills," he said. 

Petit has continued to hone his reporting skills this summer, in addition to his continuing work on The Convergence Newsletter.  As an intern for Media General, he covers state politics and other state-level stories in South Carolina and Augusta, Ga.

Underwood, too, is a soldier of sorts around the Coliseum.  As instructor Doug Fisher’s assistant forthe 2007-2008 academic year, she monitored journalism students' work and served as an extra editor for the seniors’ laboratory newspaper The Carolina Reporter. 

In the meantime, she has enlisted as an intern with South Carolina Wildlife magazine.  Underwood plans articles, selects stories, writes and copy edits for the magazine, and most recently developed a readership survey that will appear on the magazine’s Web site.

Underwood says the editing drills and statistics exercises sheendured in Camp Carolina were worth the effort, and haveserved her well in her current work with the magazine.  "The copy editing portion has been very beneficial when proofing, as has the statistics portion when creating the online survey."

"Augie would be proud," she adds, in a salute to Dr. Augie Grant.  (Grant teaches the final statistics week of Camp Carolina, and also taught Underwood in his graduate-level research methods class last fall.)  

Veteran professors reflect on the "camp" experience

Typically, four to five professors share responsibilities over the course of Camp Carolina, allowing students to gain diverse perspectives and to get to know the professors they’ll work with later in the MMC program. 

This summer marks Camp Carolina’s fifteenth year, and several professors have been teaching in the program almost as long. Professor Ernest Wiggins calculates this is his eleventh year in the camp cadre.

"Teaching in Camp Carolina is always challenging because of the limited amount of time available to us," he says.   "This forces me to be focused and economical in instruction, reducing the amount of time lecturing and increasing the amount of time in application and practice.  I think the students appreciate that, as well."

Lisa Sisk, an instructor in the Ad/PR sequence and a seven-year Camp Carolina veteran, describes the program as challenging, but rewarding. 

"Obviously it’s intense and long… weeks of full days and hard work. But the caliber of work these students produce, and the way they step up to the challenges I throw at them is inspiring," Sisk said.

The long hours and concentrated curriculum also have a way of turning strangers into fast friends.

"There's a special bond that develops among Camp Carolina participants. That same bond develops between the ‘campers’ and their instructors because the students accomplish so much in so little time," Sisk said.

Wiggins, too, enjoys meeting the incoming graduate students. "Because I primarily teach undergraduate courses, I don’t get much exposure to graduate students.  This gives me a chance to get to know some of them."

Katherine Smith, a second-year MMC student who also teaches high school English full time, adds that Camp Carolina isn’t always grueling.

"We took several ‘field trips’ to local media organizations, we celebrated summer birthdays, we went to lunch together most days…. We weren’t glued to our chairs the whole time,"  she said.

Camp Carolina 2008 promises another top-notch program.  Collins, Grant, Sisk, Wiggins, Harvey Nachlinger, Jim Haney and Tom Klipstine will share teaching responsibilities. Ten students, hailing from South Carolina, Illinois, New York, Virginia, and China, are enrolled.

To meet the rookie recruits and visit with their "drill sergeants", stop by the Carolina Reporter newsroom in the Coliseum.  The rookies might not be doing push-ups, but you can bet they’ll be pushing to learn the ropes. 

Anna Saunders is a graduate student in the School of Journalism and Mass communications, working on her Masters of Mass communication degree. She graduated from Wake Forest University in 2004 with a degree in political science, then worked for several years as an outreach counselor for Child Care Resources, Inc., a non-profit organization in Charlotte.

Anna decided to pursue a masters degree in communications with the plan of returning to non-profit work as a public relations practitioner. She acknowledges that completing Camp Carolina in 2007 gave her a much-needed foundation in writing and integrated communications. "If it weren't for Professor Wiggins' AP style drills and Lisa Sisk's red ink on all my practice news releases, the J-School probably wouldn't let me write for the Web site," she says. Anna will complete her practicum with the Palmetto Health Foundation this fall and plans to graduate in December.