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Dr. Vlad and Dean Remus Pricopie. |
Cox Center Associate Director Implements Enrollment Survey in Romania
Dr. Tudor Vlad, the associate director of the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia, worked with Romanian faculty and doctoral students in March in Bucharest to develop a questionnaire and a methodology for an annual survey of communication programs in that country.
The methodology to be used is modeled after Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Enrollments, housed in the Cox Center.
The project is a result of collaboration between the Cox Center, a unit of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, and the Center for Communication Research, a unit of the College of Communication and Public Relations at the National School for Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest, Romania.
Dr. Nicoleta Corbu, the executive director of the Center for Communication Research, spent nine months in the Cox Center in 2008-2009 as a Fulbright Scholar.
The Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Enrollments and the companion Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates moved to the Cox Center in 1997, when Dr. Lee B. Becker became director of the Cox Center.
Dr. Becker has been responsible for the surveys for more than 20 years.
"The surveys give a unique perspective on journalism education and on the job market that graduates have faced every year," Dr. Vlad said. " The findings are useful to the industry, to journalism students and to educators in the field."
"Now, more than 20 years after the fall of communism, journalism and communication education in Romania has reached a level of maturity that makes this research necessary," Dr. Remus Pricopie, dean of the College of Communication and Public Relations, said.
"By initiating this research program with our doctoral students," Dr. Pricopie said, "we aim to provide administrators of communication schools in Romania a tool to evaluate and compare their curricula and to anticipate how changes in the industry will affect the job markets that the graduates will enter."
Dr. Nicoleta Corbu told the graduate students that the enrollment survey is only one component of the partnership between the Center for Communication Research and the Cox International Center.
"We are also planning a workshop in May on communication during crisis situations and a conference in September," she said.
In addition to the implementation of the enrollment survey, Dr. Vlad also taught the Romanian doctoral students other media research methods, such as content analysis.
He used as examples work of Cox Center researchers in the Philippines on the role of media in conflict and evaluation of media training programs in the U.S. and around the world.
