Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The courses formerly known as 8350

Friday, April 11 was a watershed for health and medical journalism at Grady College. That morning, members of the graduate faculty voted unanimously to create a new MA concentration at Grady College.

This means the courses formerly known as JRMC 8350, instead of being rakish “special topics” offerings, will now be in the official University of Georgia course catalog. From now on, they will be known as JRMC 7355, Health and Medical Journalism, and 7356, Advanced Health and Medical Journalism.

Not only that, but in late 2008 we begin publicizing the new MA concentration and recruiting students for enrollment in Fall 2009. There will be national publicity campaign, probably some huge parties –who knows what the roll-out will look like?

Tell your friends: we want to attract students with strong liberal arts and sciences backgrounds, in addition to those with undergraduate training in journalism, who are passionate about covering health, medicine and health policy in the historic Black Belt.

A personal note of thanks to the brave souls who helped road test these courses during the past two years. I am indebted to Kaylan Clemons, Kimberly Davis, Joe Dennis, Colin Dunlop, Tim Echols, Christy Fricks, Lenette Golding, Geoffrey Graybeal, Stuart Hendrick, Jui-Chen Liao, Alison Loudermilk, Tabitha Lovell, Sarah McLean, Pearman Parker, Grey Pentecost, Amber Roessner, Lindsey Scott, Catharin Shepard, Elizabeth Swanson, Michael Tannebaum, Tom Zimmerman and Wendi Zongker.