Journalism's Berkey-Gerard honored for innovative teaching

September 26, 2011

Students in Mark Berkey-Gerard's classes are part--really part--of "the conversation."

"My teaching philosophy is rooted in the understanding of ‘journalism as conversation,'" says Berkey-Gerard, a Rowan University online journalism professor who recently received the University's Frances S. Johnson Junior Faculty Innovative Teaching Award.

"Journalism isn't merely about the transmission of facts or information. It is a process by which the public creates a collective understanding of culture and society."

Since joining Rowan's faculty four years ago, Berkey-Gerard has worked to establish multimedia reporting and web production as an essential component of the curriculum in Rowan's Journalism Department.

In his two online journalism classes in the College of Communication, Berkey-Gerard challenges his students to master technology tools-web design, blogging, digital photography, audio, video-to produce accurate, compelling, well-written, professional-quality news stories.

Berkey-Gerard's students work as journalists, exhibiting keen critical thinking, news judgment, reporting, writing, and fact-checking skills as they cover stories. Their class work, which also requires adherence to journalistic ethical standards, is available to the general public, a key component of learning what's it's like to have their writing read-and scrutinized-in a public forum.

A former online journalist who covered New York City politics for eight years for gothamgazette.com, Berkey-Gerard sets up his classes to mirror today's newsrooms. Students are expected to work collaboratively and to learn from each other.

"I require that students practice online journalism for real audiences," says Berkey-Gerard. "It helps them understand how the Internet is transforming news.  I remind them, ‘Your work is public. You don't believe me, but people will see it.'"

In his Online Journalism I course, students choose their own beats and produce their own online publication.

"Some of their beats are physical locations and neighborhoods," says Berkey-Gerard. "More and more, online publications are becoming niche publications."

Jessica Humphrey, a 2009 Rowan journalism alumna, found that out firsthand. Spurred by the loss of her best friend due to a lightning strike, Humphrey started "A Flash of Light" (aflashoflight.wordpress.com), an online publication focusing on lightning education and safety issues, for Berkey-Gerard's course. Now a staff writer for a weekly community newspaper group in North Jersey, Humphrey continues to maintain the blog and has become a go-to source nationally for information about lightning safety. She even has an international following.

"It started as something very personal for her. And then she approached it as a reporter," Berkey-Gerard says. "By the end of the semester, she had mayors calling her to ask for resources. Her publication became a resource for other people."

Another student, Daniel Conard, a senior journalism major, developed "My View on Runnemede," a blog that covers politics in the borough. The publication has had more than 48,500 hits-a phenomenal showing.

In Berkey-Gerard's Online Journalism II course, he takes the professional training a step farther. In that course, students are required to work in teams to contribute to and produce a single online publication on one theme. The publications (http://njsouthbound.com) have focused on everything from South Jersey diners to the state symbols of New Jersey.

During the course, co-taught by Journalism Professor Candace Kelley, students collaborate with instructors and students in two other journalism courses:
"Photojournalism" and "On-Camera Field Reporting."

"Each fall semester, we combine our classes for a few weeks. We team-teach and assign group projects to provide students with an expanded set of skills in the areas of broadcast and online news," Berkey-Gerard says.

"The collaboration mirrors the convergence of print, broadcast and web platforms within the news industry," he says. "To be successful, they have to be able to cross boundaries in a newsroom."

It was Berkey-Gerard's approach to teaching journalism that caught the attention of the awards committee from Rowan's Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Berkey-Gerard received the Junior Faculty Innovative Teaching Award in August.

The award recognized Berkey-Gerard's dedication "to creating an authentic learning experience" for his students, "one that teaches the 21^st century skills of creativity and collaboration," according to his award letter. The $850 award--$500 in travel funds, $350 in cash--was renamed last year to honor the memory of the late Frances S. Johnson, a writing arts professor and former director of the Faculty Center, who passed away in 2008.

Students, too, praise Berkey-Gerard's approach to classroom teaching. To them, he's known simply as "MBG."

"The best part of MBG's classes were the discussions he would prompt: ‘Is a blogger a journalist? Is someone who takes a picture via Twitter from a war zone ‘reporting?'" says Emily Kostic, a 2010 journalism and Honors alumna who works as a social media associate for The History Channel in New York City.

"These are valuable questions that I, and many people I graduated with, are forced to put into perspective regularly at our jobs. He helped a lot of us see that journalism isn't as black and white as we once thought it was."