During the communication department’s fourth annual Communication Appreciation Day event last Thursday, Apr. 24, students were given the opportunity to speak and connect with professionals who hold communication-based roles across a wide swath of careers and industries.
The session was conducted in a roundtable format, with three ten-minute increments allowing for the student participants to learn more about as many as three different industries. In total, there were six tables and 12 guest professionals. The six different fields represented were journalism, sports communication, social media strategy, advertising and public relations, science and environmental communication, events, and marketing and sales.
Besides their obvious professional credentials, the 12 guests were also chosen because of their statuses as University of North Dakota alumni. This was an intentional choice as not only could students have the ability to establish connections with established professionals in the career fields that interest them but also had the potential to form lasting relationships with fellow UND graduates.
Solid relationships with university alumni extend not just to students but to the department as well with several of the guests, like Lisa Martinez of the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute, having participated in Communication Appreciation Day before. Others, like Kirsten Stromsodt and Brad Schlossman of the Grand Forks Herald, have even been, or currently are, instructors at the University. This theme of inter connectivity is perfectly in line with the core themes of the event: connection, collaboration, and communication.
The fundamental idea at the heart of the Communication Career Roundtable is the universal importance of effective communication, no matter where you work. Victor Meza, a marketing manager for the Northern Plains UAS Test Site, said that, especially in highly technical fields like aviation, skilled communicators are critical in conveying complex information in an understandable way.
Along with two of the 12 guests, each table was also manned by a student table captain, whose job it was to introduce everybody to each other and help facilitate meaningful conversation. I happened to have the privilege of serving as one of these table captains and can say with confidence that the whole roundtable experience was very informative and beneficial for both the students and the guest professionals, who each got to gain more perspective on how the teaching of communication skills has changed over the years.
While the Communication Career Roundtable was the shortest part of Communication Appreciation Day, it was undoubtedly one of the most beneficial for the students who chose to participate and an excellent way of keeping alumni involved with both the university and its future graduates.
Quinn Berg is a Dakota Student General Reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].
