Professional Project

A professional project has two parts: the professional skills component and the analysis component. The former will require about 80 percent of your effort, the latter about 20 percent. Both should be carefully thought out before you submit your project proposal.

Professional Skills Component

The professional skills component of your project should build on your coursework and previous experience. This component is intended both to develop your skills and to demonstrate them to the faculty and prospective employers. Unlike previous coursework, your project will involve nearly full-time work over the equivalent of a semester. Unlike an internship, your project is the capstone of the master‘s degree program. It includes, in addition to the work itself, an analysis component that requires you to examine in detail some aspect of professional practice.

Analysis Component

For the analysis component of your project, you may choose to do either traditional scholarly research or a journalistic professional analysis. (NOTE: Faculty in the radio-television journalism and strategic communication areas have decided that students pursuing those models must do scholarly research.) In either case, you will be expected to devote the equivalent of one day a week for at least 14 weeks to the analysis component.

Research is a scholarly examination of one or more questions related to your professional skills component. That relationship typically takes one of these three forms:

Providing background information so that the project can be carried out in a more sophisticated way.
Evaluating the impact of the professional project.
Expanding understanding of some process, organization or medium that serves as the context of the project.

The product of your research is a formal paper suitable for submission at a scholarly conference or for publication in a scholarly journal.

If the research component involves testing of live human participants, the university‘s Institutional Review Board (IRB) must be approved it. Approval must precede any testing that occurs.

The beginning of the research section of the project should contain a discussion of the importance of the research component and a clear explanation of what it adds to the professional project. There should also be a clear rationale for use of the research method(s) that is (are) employed. You are required to use a methodology for which you have prepared in coursework. For example, if the chosen methodology utilizes focus groups, you should have taken the qualitative research methods course.

Include a copy of the application to the IRB and, if possible, a copy of the approval by that body. A copy of the IRB application MUST accompany the professional project proposal when it is submitted to the academic adviser. The IRB approval can be submitted later if necessary.