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COMMUNICATION STUDENTS REPORT ON DEFENSE TRANSPORTATION MEETING
In an innovative partnership
with the National Defense Transportation Association (NDTA), the Delaware
River Maritime Enterprise Council (DRMEC) and The Howland Group, Inc.,
five College of Charleston students prepared news accounts of numerous
forums, roundtable sessions, and special events at NDTA's 61st Annual
Forum & Expo at the North Charleston Convention Center, held Sept.
15-19.
NDTA, which represents 9,000
individual members and over 250 corporate members, cooperated with
College of Charleston students to prepare next day e-mail updates
about the contents of convention sessions and the other major events
of the week.
Nearly 1,000 military and transportation
professionals attended the convention, where sessions routinely were
attended by 150 or more.
"Our students had an exciting
opportunity to apply their media-writing and communication knowledge
in a real-world setting," said Brian McGee, Chair of the Department
of Communication. "Nothing can substitute for the experience
of writing on deadline and creating a story about an unfamiliar topic.
"We are grateful to NDTA
and their partners at DRMEC and The Howland Group for giving our students
this chance," he said.
The following communication
students were members of the NDTA Communications Team: Caroline Giles,
Jennifer Harris, Leah Montgomery (see photo), Elizabeth Poole and
Stacey Tokarczyk.
The student reporters worked through complicated military and logistical
jargon in completing their assignments. Interviewing corporate CEOs
and senior military officers was part of the convention experience.
Rather than let students have
all the fun, McGee took a reporting assignment and filed a story on
a Wednesday morning session. "I can't encourage students to do
something I'm not willing to do," he said.
The Department of Communication's
Professor Patrick Harwood also worked at the convention, where he
put his own television reporting skills to work. Harwood's television
news reporting students also provided footage for a streaming video
presentation about Charleston and its transportation industry.
Kent Gourdin, Chair of the Department
of Marketing and Supply Chain Management in the College's School of
Business and Economics, is an editor of the NDTA's Defense Transportation
Journal and was instrumental in bringing together the Department of
Communication and NDTA.
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