Iowa State’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication plans to add digital storytelling to the list of majors, a major which Sherry Berghefer, a teaching professor at Greenlee, said she has wanted for a long time.
“In Greenlee, we teach people how to tell stories,” Berghefer said. “That’s what students are used to doing anyway, whether it’s posting things to Instagram, creating TikToks, pick any social media platform. What you’re doing is you’re telling stories, and so the idea that we can build a program that will help teach people how to tell stories effectively, and how to use the tools that are being used in an industry is really important.”
Berghefer said faculty has been trying to promote digital offerings more and when the provost called for Degrees of the Future, the faculty put the idea out there.
Currently, Greenlee offers three majors: advertising, journalism and mass communication and public relations.
Tiffany Antone, assistant teaching professor of theater, said students will be learning about the technology they need in the present and in the future.
“There’s so many technological advancements being made every day,” Antone said. “So how do we get our students equipped to navigate that quickly developing technological world? The programs that we might need to work with in digital media, the programs that we might need to work with in digital media, as producers of content, as performers, as directors as writers? What is that technology and then also, the idea of storytelling and its applications across different fields.”
Antone said the hope is for students to be able to come into this major with any area of focus.
Ella Schulte, graduate student in journalism and mass communication, said she wishes she could go back in time and start with this major as a freshman.
“When I heard about [digital storytelling] I was like, ‘oh, my goodness, that is so cool,’” Schulte said. “And so I just think it’s really cool that Greenlee’s doing that and taking steps to be at the forefront of all these things. And I think it’s going to be a really exciting thing.”
Schulte said she thinks digital storytelling is innovative and having a leg up in the digital media is important.
The digital storytelling degree is still in the making, but Berghefer gave a glimpse of what the courses in the future degree will teach students.
“There’s a lot of interest in having a media literacy course,” Berghefer said. “It would explore the role of media, specifically personal media use, and then looking at the differences between news journalistic media and profit-driven infotainment or disinformation.”
Berghefer said there will be acting and personal branding classes as well.
“There’ll be courses in acting for people who don’t necessarily want to become actors, but again building that camera presence and courses in personal branding so in Greenlee we talk a lot about branding as far as PR (public relations) for organizations, but there’s really a strong interest in building a personal brand as well,” Berghefer said.
Degrees of the Future is an initiative designed to address employer requests and student demands. The initiative received an initial investment of $1.5 million, with the university continually looking at ways to increase funding to add degrees to address the changing demands of the workforce.
Iowa State has five other Degrees of the Future planned, with digital storytelling being the only one housed exclusively in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Three others are in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, but are paired with another college: game design in the College of Design and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, master’s of finance and technology in the College of Business and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and integrated health services in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Human Sciences and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
