High school students experience sports broadcasting at ASU camp

July 23, 2015

Eton Tuttle, a high school student from Davis, California, hopes to one day be a baseball play-by-play announcer, preferably for the San Francisco Giants. Another high school student, Marenis Kansfield, from Peoria, Illinois, wants to direct sports documentaries similar to the ones on ESPN.

The two 16-year-olds are taking their first steps toward their dreams this week through a sports journalism summer camp at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Eton Tuttle of Davis, California, practices a stand-up shot at the Cronkite Sports Broadcast Boot Camp at ASU's Cronkite School this week. Photo by: Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication Download Full Image

The Cronkite Sports Broadcast Boot Camp is a two-week residential summer camp that exposes high school students to the growing field of sports journalism. Thirty students from 16 states are participating in the July 19-31 camp, which includes baseball play-by-play sessions in the press box during Arizona Diamondbacks games, as well as trips to cover the Phoenix Mercury basketball team and the Arizona United Soccer Club.

“It’s the perfect way to get a sense of what being a sports journalism major at ASU is all about,” said Mark Lodato, assistant dean of the Cronkite School, who leads the school’s sports journalism program. “Students are exposed to the resources, faculty and partnerships that make our program the best in the country.”

Sessions include video editing, interview training and play-by-play techniques taught by Cronkite faculty as well as leading Arizona sports broadcasters and producers from the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Phoenix Suns and KTAR sports, among others.

Kansfield, who is editor of his high school’s newspaper, said the camp’s video editing session will be helpful for cutting highlight reels of football games back home. Tuttle is excited to get in the broadcast booth at Chase Field later this week and call a Diamondbacks game against the Milwaukee Brewers.

“I’m a big baseball guy, a little basketball and football, but primarily baseball,” Tuttle said. “I just like to be around the game as much as possible.”

According to Cronkite production manager Brian Snyder, who is leading the camp, students will have the opportunity to record a play-by-play broadcast, which they can watch back at the Cronkite School. Before visiting the booth, students will receive play-by-play advice from Diamondbacks announcers Steve Berthiaume and Jeff Munn during a session at the Cronkite School. Additionally, Cronkite alumna Siera Santos, a sports broadcaster for CBS Los Angeles, is co-directing the camp with Snyder.

“I don’t know of another place in the United States where students can get on-field access to Major League Baseball, where they can do play-by-play broadcasting of a Major League Baseball team and learn the ins and outs of what it takes to put a sports story together for broadcast,” Snyder said.

In the past year, the Cronkite School has significantly grown its sports journalism offerings to include bachelor’s and master’s degree in the discipline as well as sports reporting bureaus in Phoenix and Los Angeles where ASU students cover professional and collegiate sports under the direction of veteran journalists.

Students regularly cover MLB spring training and recently reported on Super Bowl XLIX in Phoenix. Lodato said students also will have the chance to travel to Rio de Janeiro to cover the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

At the Broadcast Boot Camp, students experience life as a sports journalism student on the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus, staying at the Taylor Place residence hall and using the Sun Devil Fitness complex. Kansfield said he has been amazed by the camp so far as well as the state-of-the-art media facilities at the Cronkite School.

“I looked all over for the best journalism schools and ASU just kept coming up,” Kansfield said. “When I finally came out here for a tour, I was introduced to this camp. Since being here, I have just fallen in love with this school.”

Joe Giordano

Award-winning book extends conversation on teaching of writing

ASU dean and alum part of an editorial team exploring recent curricular innovations and administrative challenges in college writing programs.

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Award-winning book extends conversation on teaching of writing

July 23, 2015

Most U.S. college students take at least one composition course as part of their degree’s general education requirements.

What that course experience looks like has changed markedly over the last 40 years, in part due to the research and professionalization of those who teach in and administer writing programs in universities and community colleges across the U.S. and abroad. ASU doctoral alumnus Nick Behm, now associate professor of English at Elmhurst College, and ASU dean Duane Roen were part of the editorial team for the book “The WPA Outcomes Statement: A Decade Later,” honored with the Best Book Award by the Council of Writing Program Administrators. Photo by: Maureen Roen Download Full Image

“In the last four decades the field has increasingly placed more emphasis on the rhetorical features of writing — how writers adapt their messages to meet the needs of specific audiences for specific purposes and occasions,” said ASU’s Duane Roen, professor of English and dean of the College of Letters and Sciences and University College. “Further, writing is now seen as a powerful tool for critical thinking and reading.”

In April 2000 a key professional organization — the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA) — published a significant driver of change. Known as “The WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition,” it articulated student learning outcomes informed by practice, theory and a large body of research.

“In addition to serving as a student-centric guide for making programmatic decisions, it also offered guidance to faculty in all disciplines about how to help students build their writing abilities along disciplinary, professional and civic lines,” Roen said.

He and ASU doctoral alumnus Nicholas Behm, along with three additional co-editors, published a book of essays in 2013 looking at the ways the CWPA outcomes statement is being implemented and influencing first-year composition, writing centers, and writing-across-the-curriculum efforts in the United States and beyond.

“The WPA Outcomes Statement: A Decade Later” was chosen to receive the CWPA’s 2015 “Best Book Award” and the editors were recognized at the annual conference of the Council of Writing Program Administrators in Boise, Idaho, July 16-19.

The edited collection features insights from leading practitioners from around the globe, many with an ASU connection. ASU faculty members Barry Maid, Barbara D’Angelo and Paul Kei Matsuda contributed chapters, as did alumni Michael Calloway, Judy Holiday, Craig Jacobsen, Susan Miller-Cochran, Deirdre Pettipiece, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, Shelley Rodrigo, Ryan Skinnell and Martha Townsend. Former ASU director of writing programs Greg Glau, now at Northern Arizona University, is another of the book’s editors.

The CWPA book awards committee praised the work for its "breadth and depth of the contributions," and noted that "this book will be a useful resource for years to come. It’s not only a retrospective, but a forward-looking work that provides ideas for institutions at all levels."

“For faculty, graduate students and administrators interested in developing and managing successful campus writing programs, the CWPA has been the go-to professional organization since it was founded in 1979,” said Roen, who has led writing programs at ASU and at Syracuse University during his career and just completed nine years on CWPA’s executive board, including a two-year term as president of the organization.

“Its active listerv, refereed journal, conferences, institutes and consultant-evaluator services have served in essence as midwife in birthing the field of writing studies and connecting a community of writing program administrators who may be one of one at their institution.”