Senior Showcase and Student Documentary Premiere
Friday, May 3, 5 p.m.
University Center Theatre
A showcase for our graduating seniors. See their capstone projects and share their successes. The evening will include the screening premiere of this year’s student documentary, “Trash Talk: Montana Recycling Challenge.”
School of Journalism Graduation
Saturday, May 4, 12 p.m.
Music Recital Hall
We can’t wait to celebrate the class of 2019!
Students: Bring as many guests as you’d like and just show up, fill out a blue card and that’s it! You graduate! (Well, after you’ve done all the tireless work to get here, that is.)
Stories are at the heart of everything senior Skylar Rispens does. And, she does it all.
Photo. Web editing and design. Writing. Social media.
You name it, she does it well.
Skylar says according to her parents, she’s been passionate about telling stories even before she could talk.
She graduated from Helena High School and set out to study journalism at UM. She says she shaped her course work to dig into photography and writing. But, she’s also been the multimedia producer for the Montana Native News Project and during her trip to Korea this last spring with Montana Journalism Abroad, she was the web content editor as well as a photographer.
Sklyar in South Korea on the Montana Journalism abroad trip this spring. Skylar worked as a photographer and the web editor. Click on the image to see the site she managed. Photo by J-School student J.K. Lou.
Skylar does her thing. Photo by UM J-School student Emily Martinek
Nicole Gone looks out her kitchen window to her backyard where she hopes to have a raised bed garden of her own. Gone regularly attends community gardening events in Hays, Montana hosted by MSU Extension Agent Hillary Maxwell. Photo by Skylar Rispens. For the Native News project in 2018, Skylar covered food security on the Fort Belknap reservation with her teammate Mari Hall. Click the image to see the full story.
This fall, she’s the photo editor of the new iteration of the Montana Journalism Review project.
Skylar writes, “With the guidance of the professors and variety of class options at the School of Journalism I have gained unparalleled reporting experience that has shaped me into a confident and eager reporter.”
This summer, she spent 10 weeks as an intern in Butte, reporting for the Montana Standard. There, she covered stories like the annual Montana Folk Festival to following an infrastructure bond proposal from committee to school board approval.
Her favorite assignment at the Standard was a world-class mountain bike race. She not only reported on the race, but documented it with incredible photo work too.
Skylar’s story in the Montana Standard, “Butte draws from Bozeman, Helena models to boost mountain biking growth,” looked at the burgeoning mountain biking scene in southwest Montana. Click the image to see the full story.
Skylar covered the 11th annual Montana Folk Festival in Butte for the Montana Standard. Click on the images to see the full gallery from the festival.
We are constantly hearing from students that one of the J-School’s biggest strengths is the dedicated, talented, fearless, experienced, fun, doors-are-always-open faculty.
The Social Media and Engagement class set out to tell that story via Instagram. Over the coming weeks, we will highlight these stories, which illustrate the personalities, philosophies and experience of our top-notch faculty. This week, we give you Associate Professor Lee Banville.
Lee joined the University of Montana faculty in 2009 after 13 years at PBS NewsHour, where he was editor-in-chief of the Online NewsHour.
With a background in web and digital reporting and social media, Lee teaches courses that include digital and web reporting, audience engagement.
Because he teaches the introductory media history and literacy course (J100), he’s often the first professor students have when they enter the J-School. We’re all lucky for that because Lee makes learning just about anything fun and interesting.
And yes, that includes Media Law, which he also teaches, focusing on access and open meeting laws. Lee also co-teaches election reporting every two years.
