Kennerson in the Chronicle today

Answers to the Diagnostic Test

Click on the link.

Answers to Diagnostic test

Thursday interview with Dr. Tyrone Dixon

Bring your notebooks. Be prepared to take notes. We will interview Dr. Dixon for 45 minutes. Be on time to the class. It starts at 11. This shouldn’t be hard to do.

Don’t rely on recording. YOU MUST TAKE NOTES.

I’m not requiring this because I’m mean or don’t understand digital technology. Taking notes is absolutely vital to your careers.

And then of course, we’re going to discuss the three paragraph opening. You should take notes on that, too.

If you want to get ahead of the game, see what you can find out about Dr. Dixon’s background and interests  online.

Valerie Madison highly recommended this opportunity.

Please share this great opportunity with your students who are interested in having a career in Public Relations, Marketing, and/ or Corporate Communications. I received my opportunity with Waste Management because of their help and they are helping me with another position for the summer.

Please share with other students.

Here is a general description of the program. Download the application and full description from the links below.

$2,000 Scholarship

Criteria for Undergraduate Students

Sixty (60) undergraduate scholarship recipients will receive a trip to New York or San Francisco where they will participate in career building activities, including a welcome dinner with a keynote speaker, two daylong career & professional development workshops and a scholarship & donor recognition reception.

Undergraduate (current freshmen, sophomores, juniors and non-graduating seniors ONLY!) applicants meeting the following criteria and completing the online application will be considered for The LAGRANT Foundation (TLF) scholarship in the amount of $2,000.

Eligibility Criteria:

• Must be a U.S. citizen, permanent resident or a student granted DACA
• Must be a member of one of the following ethnic groups: African American/Black, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino or Native American/American Indian
• Must be a full-time student at a four-year, accredited institution in the U.S., carrying a total of 12 units or more per semester/quarter
• *Must have a minimum of 3.0 GPA (if you do not meet this requirement, please see the application checklist below)
• MUST major in a field of study that has an emphasis in advertising, marketing, public relations
• Must have AT LEAST ONE YEAR to complete his/her degree from the time the scholarships are awarded inMay 2018
• Recipients who attend a college/university east of Chicago MUST be available Saturday, May 19, 2018 through Tuesday, May 22, 2018. Recipients who attend a college/university west of Chicago MUST be available Saturday, June 2, 2018 through Tuesday, June 5, 2018. If chosen, the applicant MUST attend TLF’s scholarship activities as noted at top of page to receive the scholarship. The applicant must make a one-year commitment to maintain contact with TLF to receive professional guidance and academic support.Before uploading and submitting your application online, all application documents must be combined and saved into one PDF!

2018 Undergraduate Scholarship Criteria

2018 Undergraduate Scholarship Application

Civil rights icon John Lewis in Houston tomorrow

Some story ideas for the Herald

Profiles

Dr. Tyrone Dixon is producing and going to direct a movie about a black Boy Scout troop. Danny Glover is scheduled for a major part.

Melina Spaulding, new vice president for development and media relations. How does she handle these two difficult jobs? How has her journalism career prepared her?

The new provost of TSU is Kendall Harris, an engineering professor from Prairie View. What are his priorities?

Wendell Williams is the president’s special assistant and is not in charge of increasing enrollment. What are the numbers? What is the dashboard the university uses to measure enrollment? How is enrollment tied to the financial success of the university?

Gary Bledsoe is the the new acting dean of the law school and longtime Texas president of the NAACP. What are his priorities? What is his background?

Historian Merline Pitre has written a history of TSU to be published in April by the University of Oklahoma Press. We need an interview, and we need an advance copy of the book.

Jay Aiyer is a political science professor and radio pundit about local politics. He was chief of staff for Mayor Lee Brown, the first black mayor of Houston. We’re seeing him in the media a lot. He is doing a pod cast.

Earlie Hudnall is TSU’s long time photographer. He is a living history of the university.

 

Issues and Trends

 Texas Southern University on January 20 announced it had received a five year, $2.7 million grant to put toward research stipends, scholarships and data collection in a new criminal justice center. Prof. Howard Henderson is going to lead the research. What will be the emphasis? How will this help students and faculty alike?

Women’s March and Women’s Empowerment. What are TSU women saying and thinking about this outburst of marches about empowering women? Are there groups on campus? Who are the spokeswomen on campus? What to students have to say about this movement?

Online Classes. The university administration is urging the faculty to offer more online courses. What do students have to say about taking them? How many classes are being offered online? Who in the administration would be the best spokesperson to interview?

 

Sports

TSU’s Joyce Kennerson is said to lead the country in scoring in women’s basketball. She is 5 feet 4 inches tall. She has barely been written about. What makes her so good? Where did she come from? Could she turn pro?

Men’s basketball coach Mike Davis took the team on the road during Christmas. He wanted to toughen his team and raise money at the same time. How has that worked?

 

 

 

 

TSU wins big grant on criminal justice

From the Houston Chronicle:

Texas Southern University on Monday announced it had received a five year, $2.7 million grant to put toward research stipends, scholarships and data collection in a new criminal justice center.

The grant, from the Koch Foundation-backed, D.C.-based Center for Advancing Opportunity, creates the center, which will be devoted to criminal justice research at the historically black university in an effort to create policy solutions to reform efforts.

 

New Yorker article about Howard University

Journalists need context. If, for example, you were writing about Texas Southern University, you should read this recent article about Howard University. It’s written by a Howard graduate, Jelani Cobb, who is a staff writer at the New Yorker. Here is the lead. Notice that it’s about action and reaction. I’m going to be emphasizing this all semester.  (By the way, do you know what a “block quote” is? It is where you cut and paste and by using the quote feature you indicate that the writing is not yours.

One morning last February, not long after Donald Trump had been inaugurated as President, but long before many people had reconciled themselves to that fact, students at Howard University awoke to find a bold message written on a walkway of the campus’s central plaza, known as the Yard. Spray-painted in blue block letters, it read “Welcome to the Trump Plantation, Overseer: Wayne A. I. Frederick.” The message was aimed at the heart, the character, and the conscience of Howard’s president, a reserved, deliberative oncologist and surgeon whom the board of trustees had unanimously elected to the position in 2014. Frederick is pure Howard: he earned his undergraduate and medical degrees and a master’s in business administration there. At forty-six, he has held a number of titles, but “overseer”—a derisive term for black proxies of white authority—was hardly one he was seeking.

 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/under-trump-a-hard-test-for-howard-university

Finding your way in life

Be Somebody is a web site  published in Houston that  aims to help people find their way. You might want to subscribe if this appeals to you.

“I have spent the majority of my adult life in search of the answer to this question. On a mission to find my life’s sole purpose; my true calling; the thing that I needed to discover to be happy and fulfilled. Only to be left depressed and anxious when I could not conjure up a suitable response. The problem was I had no idea what the hell I wanted to do with my life.”

Start as Late as Possible

This slogan is a variant of the Greeks and Romans writers, who said, start in the middle of things. A story or an essay should capture the reader’s imagination with action. Students who have been taught to write essays for a dozen years too often open with background. In journalism we tell stories. Here’s an opening of a story I wrote about a story teller.

John Henry Faulk was right in the middle of one of his favorite stories when he was interrupted by a burglar alarm that sounded worse than a billy goat caught in a barbed-wire fence. The alarm was to protect the art at San Antonio’s Witte Museum, where Faulk was performing his one-man show of Texas stories.

The point is to hook the reader with action and reaction. Once I get deeper into the story, I can give Faulk’s background, how he had a promising career as a radio and television personality when he was blacklisted by right-wing group during the 1950s.