Dave Martinez’s office is cluttered with thank-you letters from students. The latest addition— a message on a graduation stole— states the graduate would not be where she is at without his guidance.
Martinez is the proud diversity coordinator for the Journalism Program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he spends much of his time supporting undergraduates. But summer is a special time for Martinez because it marks the High School Developmental Program in Journalism, which he coordinates with Assistant Dean Stephen Jones.
The program invites high school students from schools with a high percentage of diverse students to attend college-prep journalism classes at CU-Boulder.
Improving diversity representation in the newsroom is a goal for the CU-Boulder Journalism Program and the industry as a whole, Martinez said.
“The media industry has recognized for many years that in order to understand the community it serves, news organizations must reflect a diversity of personnel comparable to the community’s general population,” he explained.
Now in its 14th year, the High School Developmental Program engages high school students in traditional journalism and broadcast journalism classes. The program is partially funded by a CU-Boulder Outreach Award.
The classes are conducted under the auspices of two established CU-Boulder Programs: the Pre-Collegiate Development Program and the Upward Bound Program. The Pre-Collegiate Program is designed to motivate Front Range high school students who aim to be first-generation college students. Upward Bound provides high school students— particularly from 10 designated Native American tribes— with the opportunity to experience and prepare for college.
Samira Rajabi, a doctoral candidate, taught print journalism to Pre-Collegiate students. She said the program appealed to her interests in diversity and fairness in the media, and it was rewarding to watch the students’ abilities grow.
In Rajabi’s class, students learned about traditional reporting, interviewing, style guidance, story construction, and new media. The students designed and maintained three blogs— Get Media Literate, Buffs on a Journey, and The CU Journalists. In five short weeks, they evaluated journalistic style for current articles, published stories on deadline, and managed content on their Twitter accounts.
“This is a way to get people college-ready and for the students to see what it (journalism) is like,” said Rajabi. “In reality, they would have someone like me for journalism 1001, the intro class.”
The Upward Bound students narrowed their lens on broadcast journalism. Working with graduate student Emilie Johnson, the students produced, directed, and filmed their own news program documenting the Upward Bound experience.
The resulting 15-minute news segment was narrated by four student hosts and was featured before all of their peers at Upward Bound’s closing banquet at the end of the six-week program.
Both classes wrapped up in July, and the students returned to their lives as high school students— at least for now.
Martinez said a few familiar faces from the program reappear as undergraduates in CU-Boulder’s Journalism Program, and some of his proudest moments include watching those students excel and graduate.
Although many of the thank-you notes in Martinez’s office are not from past participants, he enjoys a great sense of accomplishment knowing the High School Developmental Program helped motivate them to pursue college and potentially journalism.
“There are few programs in the nation that introduce middle and high school students of color to the concept of media careers as attempts to encourage them to complete high school and college,” Martinez said. “By introducing the idea of media careers to these first-generation students and students of color, more individuals will have the opportunity to choose to enhance and further their educational careers in established journalism programs.”