Learning Objective 1: Answer communication questions using appropriate research methods.

COME 180 (Communication Research Methods) How do we Communicate?

• This assignment was from my Freshman Year (Spring of 2019). This was a team project I did with some of my classmates which really helped me look at how we all communicate in different ways. The main purpose of this paper was to look at what type of communication the college can use to better help their students in and out of the classroom. In this project we used quota sampling to find out what students of St. Norbert College believe is the most effective way for us all to communicate on campus.

COME 330 (Intercultural Communication) Intercultural Application Paper

• This assignment was from my Junior Year (Fall of 2020). The main purpose of this paper was to use the research models that I had learned in class and explain how I can use these models in my future career. This was a very helpful assignment where not only was I able to analyze what I had learned in class, but I was also able to incorporate what I had learned into my life after college.

COME 384 (Comm Technology and Social Change) Tetrads Paper

• This assignment was from my Junior Year (Spring of 2021). The main purpose of this paper was to use a theory that we had learned in the class and incorporate it to a piece of tech from the modern era. I chose to look at virtual reality because it is something that is becoming more and more advanced and by looking at how early media scholars would have analyzed this type of tech really shows how advanced it is.

COME 468 (Mass Communication Theory) The Effects of Snapchat on Mental Health

• This assignment was from my Junior Year (Fall of 2021). The main purpose of this paper was to research a topic and then find multiple scholarly articles that were already published to help support my claim for my paper. The topic I chose was how snapchat effects mental health and I found multiple articles that I used in my literature review to help emphasize my claim. I also made an experiment that I did not actually test but hypothetically said what I believed would happen if I were to test my theory and create a study around it.

Learning Objective 2: Create messages appropriate to the audience, purpose, context.

COME 320 (Comm Technology and Social Change) Daily Inspiration Website

• This assignment was from my Junior Year (Spring of 2021). The main purpose of this assignment was to keep a blog for 30 days and to post something on it each day for my followers to see. I chose to post generated fake inspirational quotes everyday that were made by an AI from the website Inspirobot.com. I would then analyze each quote and post about what I thought it meant and how the picture that was associated with the quote fit the overall theme. I really enjoyed this project because it was a public blog so anyone could look at it if they wanted to and comment on any of my posts if they agreed or disagreed with what I was saying.

COME 320 (Crisis Communication) Image Repair Essay

• This assignment was from my Jterm of Junior Year (January 2021). The main purpose of this assignment was to create a image repair essay for a celebrity who had recently been threatened to be cancelled. I chose to do my paper on a YouTuber who I enjoyed watching named PewDiePie, who in 2017 was attacked for being a Nazi and promoting anti-Jewish messages. This was a very interesting assignment because I was able to put myself in this persons place and to feel how they should respond to these allegations in a meaningful and appropriate manner.

COME 389 (Netflix: Disruptive Entertainment) Research on Media Effects

• This assignment was from Jterm of my Senior Year (January 2022). The main purpose of this assignment was to look at gender and racial stereotypes in film and TV shows, and show how these stereotypes are effecting viewers of these programs. In this paper I analyzed two articles that were based around gender and racial stereotypes and looked at how both portrayed their findings for what was being shown on TV and in movies that would be considered racist.

COME 389 (Netflix: Disruptive Entertainment) What consumers should know Infographic?

• This assignment was from Jterm of my Senior Year (January 2022). The main purpose of this assignment was to summarize what I had learned in the class and put this information into an infographic. For this project I looked at what comedy movies were being offered to me on my own Netflix home page and looked at how many times the main character of the movies were female. I went into even further depth by looking at how many females were portrayed as not white that were shown as the main characters in the films. I enjoyed this assignment because it really opened my eyes to the discrimination that is being shown in Netflix when casting for popular movies and TV shows, where the majority of people shown are white males.

Learning Objective 3: Critically analyze messages.

COME 180 (Communication Research Methods) Final Essay

• This assignment was from my Freshman Year (Spring of 2019). This was a group project where the main purpose was to analyze a message that may cause controversy but can be perceived in many different ways. We looked at a rapper named Hopsin who created a song that shows how he perceives religion that gained a lot of controversy because he talks ill about the bible so many religious listeners were not happy with his messages. In this paper we talk about how if you truly analyze these messages you will see that he is not trying to talk bad about Christianity but that he is lost and confused and doesn’t know what to think.

COME 252 (Writing for Media) Problems with Journalism

• This assignment was from my Sophomore Year (Fall of 2019). This was the final project for this class where I had to find a problem with modern day journalism and analyze why this is such a problem. I focused my paper around web journalism which is a big problem because nowadays anyone can post online about any issue. From this credibility is a huge problem when finding articles online and now anyone can say they are a credible source.

COME 384 (Comm Technology and Social Change) Gamer Rage Video

• This assignment was from my Junior Year (Spring of 2021). This was a fun collaborative project where the main purpose was to create a public service announcement about an issue. My group focused on the issue of gamer rage, when people get angry the more they play a video game until they become more aggressive. We made a video showing this issue and had some fun showing this issue and bringing the attention of it to the public. We also looked at other instances of this happening and other articles that talk about how the more that people play an aggressive video game the more aggressive they may become.

COME 384 (Comm Technology and Social Change) Black Mirror Essay

• This assignment was from my Junior Year (Spring of 2021). The main purpose of this assignment was to analyze an episode of Black Mirror and write about how the episode we watched made us feel as well as what message we took away from it. The episode I watched was about a kid that gets a computer virus on his computer that allows hackers to access his webcam and then the plot escalates from there. This was a great assignment because two people could have watched the same episode and taken away completely different messages after watching it.

Areas of discipline I specialized in – The majority of my classes had an emphasis in the media studies portion of the major. Most of my classes dealt with social scientific research, with a few focusing more on critical research. The social scientific topics that were researched were mostly social, educational and some political purposes. The critical research focused more on some feminism and racial topics on how everyone has different views and values that other people need to learn how to respect and embrace within their own lives.

What I am interested in pursuing after college – I am interested in working in a privacy field after college. I am currently working as a privacy analyst for a home health agency and I am in charge of working with a program called Protenus. My main job is to use this program and create cases when the program identifies possible employee access to patient information that may indicate an employee committed a privacy breach or policy violation. The employee may have looked at medical record documentation for patients that they should not be looking at, whether it be family, friends or other patients they are not assigned to.

Other experiences that have helped me outside the classroom – Outside of the classroom this internship I am currently in with a home health agency has helped me learn new skills that will help me later in life. By learning how to use programs, such as Protenus, it helps set me up for future jobs where I will have more experience than others that may be trying to apply for the same job. I also am learning how to send emails to people after they have committed acts that go against the company policy and how I can show them where they went wrong while also showing them how to not make the same mistake again in the future. Many of the people I talk to in this internship, about their employee privacy breaches, are managers and directors who are older and have more years of work experience than I do. I learned to talk to them in a professional manner different than how I would communicate with my peers.

• Principles of Mass Communication (COME 124)

• Communication Research Methods (COME 180)

• Writing for Media (COME 252)

• Crisis Communication (COME 320)

• Intercultural Communication (COME 330)

• Communication Technology and Social Change (COME 384)

• Netflix: Disruptive Entertainment (COME 389)

• Television Criticism (COME 467)

• Mass Communication Theory (COME 468)

• Internship Credit (COME 494)