Contact: Dr. Trudy Hanson

[email protected]

806-651-2800

Through a partnership between the West Texas A&M University Department of Communication and Windows on a Wider World, students from Forest Hills, Highland Park, St. Joseph’s, Tulia, Bushland, and Spearman elementary schools will tour the media communication facilities at WTAMU this schoolyear. Three tours were completed in the fall with three more in the spring semester. The communication department will also partner with WOWW for the annual WTAMU Storytelling Festival on May 1, which will bring 400 to 600 elementary school children to the campus to see a live storytelling performance.

“The neat thing about giving the tour is that we get to introduce them to what media is,” said Randy Ray, an associate lecturer of media communication and the communication department’s director of broadcast engineering. “They’re pretty young, but everyone knows what a movie is and everyone knows what TV and radio are. They already know what that is, so we just explain to them that this is where we teach students who are older than them who want to work in that field.” 

Windows on a Wider World works with elementary schools to enhance the quality of education for students in the Panhandle by raising money to help teachers give their students learning opportunities outside of the classroom. On these tours, the students get to experience something they wouldn’t have been able to in a normal classroom setting. They tour the WTAMU TV studios, the KWTS radio station, and the editing bays, and they are given demonstrations on how it all works. 

About the WTAMU Department of Communication
The Department of Communication has undergraduate programs in media communication and communication studies, as well as a master’s program in communication. For more information, please visit https://www.wtamu.edu/academics/communication.aspx

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