(Front row ) Semaj Robinson; Nancie Dodge; Ladonia Randle; (second row) Emily Burch; Yanick Rice Lamb; Kangming Ma; Kara Williams Glenn; Pam Johnson; (third row) Brett Chambers; David Marshall; Mark Beckford

BOWLING GREEN, KY — The Dow Jones News Fund/WKU Digital Workshop kicks off its eleventh year with a new curriculum to enhance the skills of faculty from HBCUs.

The new curriculum includes drones, 360 cameras and whiteboarding,” said Dr. Pam McAllister-Johnson, workshop director and WKU professor of journalism. “We will also review basic Adobe Suite skills and video.”

During the week-long workshop, faculty members will be grouped in teams. Each team will produce a digital story about a health topic and how it affects diverse populations in the WKU campus community. The stories will focus specifically on mental health, refugees, and sports.

Coaches will teach workshop participants skills needed to produce their final projects including: photojournalism, video production, podcasting and mobile news apps.

Given the emerging importance of drones and 360 cameras to cutting edge journalism, this year, participants will also engage in hands-on learning with these newer story-telling tools.

The eight HBCU faculty are: Semaj Robinson, Alabama A & M University; Kangming Ma, Hampton University; Mark Beckford and Yanick Rice Lamb, Howard University; Emily Burch Harris, North Carolina A&T University, Brett Chambers, North Carolina Central University; David Marshall, Morgan State University, and Ladonia Randle, Texas Southern University.

“What are doing this week is so important because it will impact hundreds of HBCU students,” said Johnson. “By training these professors, we are empowering them to improve their digital teaching skills, which in turn will increase their own students’ chances of landing competitive journalism jobs, scholarships and internships.”

This year’s coaches are Nancie Dodge, former Adjunct Faculty at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University; Ron DeMarse, WKU School of Journalism & Broadcasting and Kara Williams Glenn, WKU Department of Communication.

The workshop runs July 22–28.

Since 2008, the Dow Jones News Fund/WKU Digital Workshop has trained approximately 110 HBCU faculty.

The initiative is funded by a grant from The Dow Jones News Fund and the facilities and equipment are provided by the WKU School of Journalism & Broadcasting.