By Annie Riley
Staff Writer
Four St. Bonaventure journalism and mass communication majors attended the Communications conference in Ellenville, N.Y. last weekend to present their papers on “How the mass communications industry portrays American’s First Ladies.” The New York State Communication Association (NYSCA) held the conference.
NYSCA is an organization of faculty, students and professionals in communications dedicated to studying, improving and applying the principles and practices of communications to all walks of life, according to its website.
Anne Lee, lecturer of journalism, assigned the paper to the students in her class, Women, Minorities and the Media. Lee chose four students, Cassie Stubbs, Skye Tulio, Kerri Linsenbigler and Stacia Salvatore, to present at the conference.
“I found myself watching their faces and seeing that they were absorbing information and truly listening to the presenters’ perceptions on mass communications or on how people interact with each other,” said Lee.
Students at the conference had the opportunity to hear from different speakers from different universities.
“Professor Lee asked our class who would like to attend the NYSCA conference, informing us that our papers would be presented at the conference,”said Salvatore. “We went to present our ‘First Ladies’ to a panel discussing ethics of representation: gender, race, age, and sexuality.”
“Writing the paper didn’t take too long, but getting slides together and writing our scripts took a little longer,” said Stubbs.
“Our presentation was on how the mass communications industry portrays America’s First Ladies,” Salvatore said. “More specifically, the First Lady that we each were assigned: Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, and Pat Nixon.”
During the conference, the students were able to hear from other panels from different professionals.
“They also had an undergraduate town hall, where students at the conference could get together and speak to a communications professional about the future,” Stubbs said. “It was great to hear from all these professionals and it was also a great networking event. As a J/MC major, it was great to meet with these people because they could potentially be a future employer or colleague.”
The college students attending the conference had the opportunity to attend undergraduate discussions that focused on entering the real world, according to Salvatore.
“I hope that Bonaventure continues to allow their students to gain experience by allowing them to represent Bonas in a professional setting like NYSCA.” Salvatore said. “The keynote speaker on Saturday night, John Shotter, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, had said something that will definitely stick with me; ‘Words are like hands-you can touch people with your words.’”
rileyam12@bonaventure.edu
