Jason Piscia
11:58:02 AM
Grace: Click the camera icon next to the countdown timer to connect.
Still, we'll be recording this grace, and we'll.
Clip out parts of it for.
You know, social media and other purposes, so.
OK, welcome everyone. We have some folks joining us, so I'm gonna hold on just one moment for everyone to get logged in and connected.
OK, looks like we have some folks who've joined us. We'll welcome everyone. My name is Catherine Kleeman. I'm part of the admissions team here at the University of Illinois Springfield. Before we get to today's presentation, I have a couple housekeeping items to go over.
So that you're aware this webinar is being recorded and will be made available for viewing after it's usually about 24 hours. After that we can get it on the website. So don't feel like you have to take frantic notes. You'll be able to go back and review it later. Within your share screen, you'll notice that there's a closed captioning option. It's in the bar on the upper right hand side, and it's the button with the little CC inside of it. Next to it is the option to make your video full screen.
If you would like that option, if you should need to resync your audio or visual or video at any point, just refresh the browser and that should clear up any issues you're having. We would love to hear your questions in the chat, so feel free to post those throughout. They're probably going to hold on answering them until the end, but feel free to go ahead and post those. They'll get to them and go through them at the conclusion of the presentation. I want to thank everyone for joining us.
And we're very excited that you're here. And with that, I'm going to introduce Jason Pisha, who's the director of our Public Affairs reporting program here at UIS and Grace Kinnicutt, who is an alumna of the program and is working in the field. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jason and Grace. Thank you.
Thanks, Catherine. Nice to see everyone today. Just I'm here to introduce to you the Public Affairs reporting program. It's a 10 month Masters degree program at the University of Illinois Springfield. We focus on, you know, creating journalists who hold government accountable, being able to report on government and politics. And to keep everyone honest, I have a quick PowerPoint presentation.
To zip through and then we'll talk to grace a little bit. Grace is one of my students from last year. She is now employed as a news reporter for the Quad City Times in the Quad Cities Area of Illinois. I believe she covers a City Hall in one of those towns. Is that right, grace?
OK, alright. Can people see my?
Or do I need to press something? Sorry, cancel?
Kathryn Kleeman
12:03:29 PM
They can see them.
Alright, we'll just jump right into the slide presentation. So like I said public Affairs Masters degree program, 10 months in and out of here in less than a year. If you had, you know, you're considering a career in journalism and you're wrapping up your your undergraduate years and you're wondering, you know, is Graduate School the the right move for me? You know that's that's a hard question to answer.
That's tempting to go right into the job market. It also might be tempting, depending on your undergraduate experience, to want some more professional experience under your belt before you go out and search for that first job. I think PAR is a great compromise between those two.
We provide the higher level training that you'll need to to properly report on government, and then there's a guaranteed internship in the spring semester that will get you working with a professional journalist covering state government in the Illinois capital.
Here's a few pictures of.
Doing things around the statehouse, the top one there is us with the Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch. Last fall he came in and did an exclusive news conference just for us. And then the one below is Illinois Supreme Court Justice Ann Burke and our current class met with her just a couple of weeks ago and as we did a tour of the Supreme Court building to learn about how the judicial system works in Illinois.
Like I said, you're guaranteed A6 month internship with a professional news organization. Currently, our news organizations are here.
Lately we've been having internships with the Sun Times, the Daily Herald, which is a newspaper, suburban Chicago. The State Journal Register, which is the local newspaper here in Springfield, Lee Enterprises, which runs several newspapers around the state of Illinois, including graces the Quad City Times. Capital News, Illinois is a wire service that serves newspapers around the state, providing them state capital news. Illinois Times is a weekly and then we have broadcast.
That works as well. The Champagne TV station, Gray TV has stations around the state and then some NPR stations around the state as well. Like I said, we, you know, we get students in, you know, doing real journalism right away when that spring semester starts. So they're, you know, able to be on camera if, if their skills are up to it. And they're covering protests and committee hearings and floor action and news conferences and everything else going on at the, at the.
Great thing about PR. I think it solves that challenge of getting professional work samples and experience. You know if you want to get your first job, they're going to want some professional work samples. But if you've never had a the chance to get any and through in a professional internship, you may not have those and not have the experience to get that done. And if you want, you know the experience you'll need the the work samples to to get that to go to. So this solves both of them. Like I said, they didn't.
Ship is guaranteed very affordable.
You know, we like to say that you know, you can get, you know, PAR degree if you're an in state student in Illinois student, Illinois resident by the time you pay tuition and fees, but then you'll get back money in the form of a monthly stipend. And then we do guarantee scholarships for every admitted student as well. You can get, you know, your PR degree for an in state resident for about under $6000.
And also excellent job placement rate. You know, each year if a student finishes PAR and they are ready to jump into the workforce, they're going to have a very good chance of finding a job. I had nine students in my class last year, including grace, and all of them have jobs and journalism. So we had 100% placement rate this past year and that's pretty typical.
Like I said, my part of this isn't very long, but that's my contact information. Happy to answer any questions and feel free to follow us on social media. I keep track of what our students are doing and other news about the program.
I did want to just talk to grace for a little bit here as well. It brought her on just cause, you know, she's gone through the program she did her undergraduate at Illinois State, worked at the the student newspaper and and other places around campus. But you know, Grace, I was interested maybe talk a little bit about, you know, why you decided to pursue PAR as opposed to, you know, go and get a job right away or any of the other things you could have done after getting finished at IU.
Well, I I knew I liked politics already. I took a I minored in it, so I already knew like, the enjoyment was there. So when I heard about the PAR program and knowing a few IU alumni is did it too, I looked into it a little bit more just because it sounded really interesting and like, you get a cover politics in the statehouse. I mean, it's kind of a win win, and it's a neat situation.
So I did it just because I enjoy politics as is and it really helped. It helped me feel more confident in my reporting too, going forward. So it it it was a really good experience.
Yeah. You mentioned how it made you feel more confident in your, you know, what your job is going forward. Maybe talk a little bit more about that, about you know, what you're doing now and sort of how what you learned in PAR helps you do that job better.
So, Umm, when Mpar I interned with Capital News, Illinois, the wire service going in, I had a very small like, I guess.
Kathryn Kleeman
12:09:55 PM
Website: https://www.uis.edu/par
Black I don't want to say lack of knowledge almost just like not covering politics because I was at the student newspaper. So I was just covering like I would cover board of trustees and maybe a few City Council meetings around town if time allowed. But I didn't really, really know how to go about covering politics. So when I first started I I felt very scared and shy because you're like, you're just like this person, you're new and you're around all these politicians and you're just very nervous. You don't want to like.
Touch them and I did it. I felt like I did not know what I was doing the first month just because we were. It was all online due to COVID stuff and just like the winter weather. So I was just covering committee hearings and.
Timothy A.
12:10:26 PM
What additional experience(internship, work or volunteer) do I need to be competitive?
But, like, the more I got into it and the more I of course got direction from, like, my Bureau chief. And I just started to, like, pick up on things really slowly. And before I knew it, I was just kind of a I was able to like, approach people because I'm a shy person, naturally. And I was just able to, like, approach these politicians and just strike up a conversation or give them a call. And then in the Quad Cities now I I report for Moline and Rock Island City Council.
Which is still on in Illinois. And then of course I get to do some Illinois politics when time allows. And so it was I, it just made my reporting a lot stronger. I felt like I like everything flowed more with my reading. It wasn't like as choppy and I was able to pick up like certain like words to describe it a little bit better and I I just felt like I gained more knowledge as as a whole and it just really helps me think of questions on the spot.
And sort of like dig deeper and besides like those surface level questions.
Yeah, and a lot of PAR students come into the program with not having reported on politics before. Maybe they did come from a a campus experience where, you know, they reported on campus things, guest speakers and events happening around campus, but politics is a whole different experience.
You know, in in the fall semester, like I said, the first three or four months of PAR is spent mainly in the classroom. The main course you take is a an advanced reporting course with me and then there's some electives that you take around that to sort of fill out your semester. But Grace, talk a little bit about the fall semester and sort of how that was in terms of sort of getting you ready for the internship experience.
So the fall semester, I I liked it because you were focused on learning the in's and out of the statehouse and who the people are. You're learning how to like sort of adjust your writing to make it like simple for people to understand what's going on in the statehouse because the average person doesn't know what's going on in politics.
So the first semester was very important to just sort of like, OK, this is what's going on and this is how we're going to break it down. And then you also get to learn who a few of those like, important people are, like we spoke to Speaker Welch or House Minority Leader Durkin. So you sort of like gotta almost set up contacts when like going into the next semester. So the first semester, it felt like it set me up for success going into second semester practically.
I can't remember how your job search went, if you went, you know, seamlessly into the Quad Cities or if you had some interviews with things. But I'm just wondering, get you to talk a little about some of the reputation of PAR at other newspapers around the state or the country. You know you have PAR behind your name on your resume, sort of. What kind of doors does that open compared to, you know, if you just had the bachelor's degree?
So it definitely opened a lot of doors for me. It, um, I applied to a few other places actually within the lead network and at least at at all of those Lee papers, they had at least one par person who was there or just like, they had someone there. So you're you're definitely going into, once you leave the PR program, you're definitely going in somewhere where someone's going to know.
Benjamine O.
12:13:55 PM
We can’t hear Grace
You and coming to the Quad Cities, it was nice because two of my coworkers are former pars and so, so they knew basically what what I was, what I just came from and what I was going to switch to. But it's also nice because it when I came up to the Quad Cities, I still had those contacts or sources I made in the statehouse for like Representative Mike Halpin, who's running for Senate now, or.
There there's just, there's just a few different people who I was able to make as a source down in the statehouse. I was just able to carry them right back up here. And I didn't basically have to like restart all over trying to get new sources because they already knew who I was and they and they trust me and they know if I need something they they can call me or I can call them.
Yeah, and another interesting thing about PR is, you know, the class is pretty small. Your class had nine, the class year before had eleven. We usually try to keep the class to about 12 or less in a given year. So as a result, you'll sort of get to know each other pretty well and you all sort of take the same classes together in the fall. I think a really close friendship.
Plans to, but you know, develop between everyone in the whole class. Maybe talk about a little bit about the social aspect of it and sort of how it is doing grad school with with this group of people.
Yeah. So it's it's very important to have like a good group of friends and kind of getting to know each other because you're with each other for 10 months and you're in like you're in the statehouse and things move fast and things can be hectic and chaotic and it gets tiring, exhausting really fast. So our class, we sort of, especially during first semester, we would all meet up once a week, we would we would just go out around town, we would meet at someone's house, have a game night or something. It was just kind of to just blow off some steam.
To talk and to vent and then second semester is a little bit harder to do that just because we were also busy. But we all made sure to do that once a month. Just kind of go out with each other, talk. And usually a lot of the times we make sure we wouldn't try and talk about the statehouse because you need a mental break from it. It's it's exhausting, but it's really good to get to know your classmates because you're you're each other's support system for the next 10 months and you you really need that going through, especially when.
You're in March and you're just plain exhausted from covering the statehouse. You you need, like that level of joy with other people somewhere outside of it.
Kathryn Kleeman
12:16:46 PM
@Benjamine, try re-syncing your audio.
Yeah, yeah. So just in terms of logistics, like I said, the program starts in August, you take the first semester courses in December, you start that internship right the first week of January and you go through at least the end of May. You're if you have a job lined up by June 1st, you're able to to leave PAR a little early. Otherwise you can stay here till June 30th and finish out your internship that way.
Timothy A.
12:17:13 PM
Do we get waiver for Fall 2023? Those who attend can apply for free with no GMAT/GRE scores required according to the notification mail.
But yeah, lots of great experience and a lot of great friends. I did want to note that the first round application deadline for PAR is April 1st. We'll look at all the applications we have, and we'll invite a limited number of them to go through an interview and a testing process just to make sure that they, you know, have the.
Sort of the ground level writing skills to to succeed in this program, but then after that we'll we'll get you started in August and we'll we'll take it from there. Any questions from the chat, I'm not seeing any but.
Timothy yes, what additional experience, internship work or volunteer do I need to be competitive?
Look, if you have any sort of journalism experience or and or an interest in politics, we can make PAR.
Kathryn Kleeman
12:18:05 PM
@Timothy, there is no need for you to do anything. We will code the waiver on the backend.
A success for you, you know, especially if you come from a campus media background or a public relations background where you've done some writing, you know you're you're good. But I've had students who were political science majors and never took one journalism class at all in undergrad. But they love politics and they know, you know, who likes whom and who doesn't like each other and can really talk about that very knowledgeably. So we just Polish up their writing skills and that fall semester and.
And get them on their way. So yeah, you really there's no one correct way to be the most competitive, but I'm just looking for a desire to be a reporter and some interest in in reporting on politics.
Let's see. Do we get a waiver for fall 23 O the waivers tuition waivers apply to?
Spring and summer semesters, students do have to pay, you know, full freight.
Kathryn Kleeman
12:19:14 PM
@Timothy, I referred to application fee.
For tuition in the fall. But like I said, we in the spring semester, you also get a small monthly stipend. You just get yourself on the university payroll and we pay you a little bit of money each month to be an intern. And then we have a scholarship process in the fall as well where everyone gets something. I think this past year, last year, all the students got around $3000 in scholarships and so we try to shoot for that number every year.
Says those who attend can apply for free with no GRE score, right? We don't need a GRE to get into Graduate School or anything like that, and I believe the.
Application deadline is, yeah, and Catherine referred to it in the chat here. No application fee. Is that still going to be the case going through this year, Catherine?
We are charging an application fee, but as it was stated in the e-mail, for people who attend the specific grad week events, we will be waiving those and there's nothing that students will apply need to do. We will code it on the back end based on their attendance.
Alright, well I think that's all I had. Grace, thank you for sharing your story with us. Great to hear from you and great to see all of you as well. Again, my contact information is available. I'm open to phone calls, zooming e-mail, texting, conversations, whatever works best for you to to learn more about PAR. But looking forward to seeing some applications from you come in and like I said, please consider us for your post bachelor's degree.
Timothy A.
12:20:54 PM
@ Kathryn do you mean this also cover for Fall 2023?
Thank you very much, Jason and Grace, for joining us today. Thank you to everyone who joined us virtually to learn more about our public Affairs reporting program. Please give us a day or two to get the recordings ready and then they'll be posted on the website if you need to rewatch them. Thank you so much. Have a great day or evening wherever you're at.
Grace Kinnicutt, Alumna
12:21:20 PM
Youre welcome!