[Gina Stevens]  Our program is very broad based.  There are courses in mass media, broadcasting, rhetoric, interpersonal communication, video production.  All sorts of different areas.  

[John Harrigan]  The students feel very positive about ECC and the communications program because it prepared them for whatever they were doing next.  

[Gina Stevens]  A majority of our students do go on and transfer to a four year school and continue to pursue a Bachelors' degree in communication arts.  

[John Harrigan]  Most of our students transfer to other SUNY schools, locally and other ones around New York State.  Students that go locally to UB, Buff State, Fredonia, Brockport, even some of the private schools like Canisius or D'uville, Medaille, they do very well. We have articulation agreements with all of those schools so if they graduate with a communications arts degree from ECC, then they're automatically accepted as juniors at that school and all the courses transfer in one way or another.

[Student DJ] We're going to be playing music for you all day.

[John Harrigan]  The students have a plethora of internship opportunities.  We do eight to 10 internships every semester.

[Gina Stevens]  And they can set up an internship with any area media organization.  We've had several students intern at channel two, four and seven as well as Fox.  97 Rock is another big user of our services as far as interns go.  Students like to do that kind of thing.  The feedback that I hear from students after they've done an internship is usually very good.

[John Harrigan]  I've had students been offered jobs, part-time jobs, via the internships.  At the very least they establish a relationship with the people they worked with in, let's say, the radio business.  And they make contacts that way for future employment endeavors.  So it is a very positive experience.

[Gina Stevens]  It is.  They switch back and forth.

[Gina Stevens]  Usually we try to space out the schedules so that they take one or two communication arts courses a semester and then they take maybe two electives.  So in a typical day they might be taking a communication arts course with John, like intro to rhetoric or communication theory, and then they would take a communication arts course with me like intro to mass media or intro to broadcasting.

[John Harrigan]  Some of my classes are a little bit larger so they're in the lecture hall and we usually deal with PowerPoint presentations.  I like to play a lot of music in class as well to supplement the lecture.   We do a lot of group work in class.  There are presentations; there's all kinds of things that make up that kind of lecture oriented kind of class.  There are some production classes that are more lab oriented.  So the students are doing hands on activities; working on computers doing non-linear video editing.

[Gina Stevens]  In all my classes, I try so hard to incorporate the real world experience into my lectures and into the class activities and things like that, because that's hopefully the jobs that students will be pursuing after they graduate from here.

[John Harrigan]  There are more outlets then ever before.  If you just look at TV, in the past you had three choices, 2, 4, or 7.  Now you've got 150 choices.  So that means there needs to be more programming, needs to be more production, which allows for more jobs in that kind of area of broadcasting.   

[John Harrigan]  I always say that communications is a great place to start because, no matter what discipline you get in to communication will serve that well.  It's really a great discipline to have as a background to do many things.