The effort was highlighted on Tuesday when a handful of students in the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program, a new annual program at the Cronkite School that brings between nine to 15 foreign journalists to ASU, spoke at the Association of Multicultural Journalists’ meeting on Tuesday.
This year’s 10 Humphrey Fellows come from all over the world—including the countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Macedonia, Croatia and China—and they will spend 10 months studying at ASU.
Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan said the Humphrey Fellows are young professionals from other countries who have been identified as future leaders of their organizations, and he said their time at ASU is as valuable to Cronkite students as it is to them.
It’s a “great program for them (but) probably even more important for our school and our students because now you’ll have journalists from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, all over the world sitting next to you in a class,” Callahan said. “All of a sudden that adds such depth to the conversation.”
Since the start of the 2009-2010 school year, the Cronkite School has made expanding its global reach a top priority, Callahan said, and it has done so by attaining the Humphrey Fellowship program, starting a study abroad trip to China and bringing in more and more foreign journalism students each year.
“While I still think there’s many, many more things we can do in 12 months, I think we’re doing more now globally than, not all, but the overwhelming majority of journalism schools,” Callahan said.
After redoing the school’s the curriculum, doubling the size of faculty and staff, establishing more professional programs and moving to the Downtown campus, Callahan said expanding internationally moved to the top of the school’s priority lists
“It was sort of like, ‘Well, what’s next?’” he said. “And the ‘what next’ very much was a couple of things but really first on the list is global initiatives.”
The Cronkite School was also recently selected to host another annual program called the Edward R. Murrow Fellowship Program, which will bring 15 journalists to the school for two weeks and in time for the 2010 U.S. elections, Callahan said.
To head the school’s global efforts, Associate Professor Bill Silcock was made the Director of Cronkite Global Initiatives—the umbrella group of the school’s international efforts.
“I believe the world is our beat, and you cannot talk about journalism in this day and age without being able to really know something about the world around you,” Silcock said.
It is important for students to experience the world first hand, said Silcock, adding that they can by interacting with many of the international students now attending the Cronkite School or participating in the school’s summer programs to Europe or China.
“The world is a big place, so we’re trying to strategically help the students get in touch with real people—not just textbooks, not just internet stuff, not just distorted YouTube videos,” Silcock said.
Landing the Humphrey Fellowship Program gave the Cronkite School the backbone to pursue other international goals, Silcock said.
Another professor helping lead the school’s international agenda is Andrew Leckey, the Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism, who started an International Business Journalism program in May that took 15 students to China and will do so again in May of 2011.
“Increasingly the Cronkite School’s being known internationally,” Leckey said. “We have a real connect with the rest of the world, which we have not had in previous years.”
Leckey, who heads the Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, said the Cronkite School is in talks with Tsinghua University in Beijing to start a program that would send students that graduate from the Cronkite School on a scholarship to attend their masters program in Global Business Journalism. Leckey is also considering a second international business journalism program—possibly to a country in Latin America such as Brazil.
“We’d have to get a couple of Chinas under our belt before we move on though,” Leckey said.
The Cronkite School is the best in the U.S., Leckey said, and is on its way to becoming the best journalism worldwide, but he said would like to see more cooperative efforts with foreign students.
“In a global society, global communication is urgently important,” he said. “We can be in the forefront of that globalization of communication.”
Contact the reporter at salvador.rodriguez@asu.edu
