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daily nebraskan
friday, October 2, 1981
Career tracks' directing communications majors
By Charles Flowcrday
Editor! Note: The following story is the first of a
weekly, series that will explore job opportunities for grad
uates with different majors.
"No college freshman can project 25 years to decide
what he needs to learn - subject matter is easily forgotten
and in today's world, the knowledge explosion makes con
stant learning an inevitability. But all adults today need to
be able to communicate with clarity, to articulate ideas,
reason, to separate key facts from the barrage of ideas we
all are exposed to every day."
- Helen Wise, former president,
National Education Association,
from a Speech Department brochure
The number of undergraduates majoring in speech com
munication at UNL has approximately doubled since the
department began incorporating a series of career "tracks"
designed to prepared students for general vocational goals,
William Seiler, chief adviser for the department, said.
These eight tracks have general application to specific
vocational areas, Seiler said. They evolved about two years
ago as a response to student and faculty criticism. He said
the department incorporated them to better help students
develop communications skills while providing a good ca
reer direction upon graduation.
"No one goes into English for job
specific training. If you do so, you
are ill-advised. You do it for the
challenge."
English professor Jim McShane
The areas featured involve mostly departmental courses,
but add inter-discplinary study to further enhance a stu
dent's job potential, Seiler said.
The tracks offered are business and organizational com
munication, public relations, pre-law, political communi
cations, communications in the helping professions, com
munication in social change, communication in religion
and teaching speech. In addition, Seiler said, the depart
ment offers a traditional liberal arts track and a pre-gradu-ate
study plan.
Teaching English
In contrast to the formalized preparation of speech
communications, James McShane, former chief adviser for
the UNL English Department, said an English degree is
not one that trains students for anything specific beyond
teaching English.
It's not a job-oriented degree, McShane said. He ex
plained that the advantages of the major are that what a
person learns stays with and grows with the person. He
said this is true for most liberal arts majors.
McShane said he heard recently that the half-life of a
technical degree is about eight years. This means that
about one half of what a student learns is obsolete in that
time, he said.
The English major will have to be trained for a specific
job, he said, but the technical major eventually will have
to re-train also.
"The nature of study in language and literature is that
one is always confronting the new and different. It creates
a body of people who ought to be at ease with change,"
McShane said.
This will be increasingly important in an ever-changing
society, he said.
The major should ideally produce first-class problem
solvers, administrators and people with good personal re
lators skill he said. Because of the great deal of work
done in writing and rhetoric, English majors should know
how to research, read critically, how to assess and re-assemble
what .they have learned for different purposes.
Critical skills
"You know how to look at an argument. For a society
so dependent on communications those skills are critical,"
he said.
"No one goes into English for job-specific training. If
you do so, you are ill-advised. You do it for the challenge,"
McShane said.
He said that the thinking about people, about character,
about motivation and the sensitivity to individuals an Eng
lish major develops should be first-rate training for any
job.
The English Department does not offer the specific
tracks program that speech communications does but it
does have an excellent reputation as a pre-professional
major, McShane said. He said students often pursue self-
initiated bridge programs while preparing for graduate
training in ousmess law or meaicine.
Stanley Vandersall, chief adviser for the Department of
Classics, said his comments would probably run similar to
McShanes regarding job prospects for classics majors.
Vandersall said because of the training a classics major
gets in studying a complex language, he develops skills
that are broadly applicable.
"Learning the logic of language is
an excellent background for dealing
with other kinds of problems."
Classics professor
Stanley Vandersall
He said suggested fields for further study are business
administration or administration in general because stu
dents in his department cultivate a feeling for language,
accuracy of expression and a consciousness of logical
thought.
Short supply
"These are in all-too-short supply in some fields," he
said. By studying Latin or Greek, Vandersall explained,
the student is forced to consider the appropriateness of
the way one writes, speaks and thinks.
He cited teaching Greek or Latin as the most obvious
career available to a classics major. But he said that de
partmental students pursue careers in archeology, linguis
tics, the ministry, government service, tourism or work as
translators. He said the degree is also excellent training for
' law school as evidenced by the high percentage of depart
mental majors accepted by the College of Law.
"Management, as such, is not completely out of the
grasp of classics people," he said.Citing the careful handling
of detail combined with a broad mode of thinking that
people in the humanities engage in, Vandersall said a clas
sics background makes one very suitable for a number of
different jobs.
"Learning the logic of language is an excellent back
ground for dealing with other kinds of problems," he said.
Rec Department
offers plans for
skiing, canoeing
Trips offered by the
UNL Recreation Depart
ment are filling up faster
than ever before this semes
ter, but students can still
sign up for a fall or winter
vacation, said Mark Ebel,
recreation director.
The department is spon
soring a Dismal River canoe
trip from Mullen to Thed
ford, Neb., Oct. 9 through
11. The weekend will cost
$35 and there are two open
ings left.
Two trips are offered
Jan. 2 through 10. Six
openings remain for a ca
noeing trip on the Rio
Grande River in Big Bend
National Park, Texas. The
trip will cost $125.
At the same time, a
cross-country ski trip in Yel
lowstone National Park is
planned. There are 11 open
ings, and the trip will cost
$250.
Another cross-country
ski trip is planned Feb. 24
through 28. There are se
ven openings and the cost is
$135, Ebel said.
Ebel said the price of
each trip includes transpor
tation, lodging and most
meals. Persons must pay 30
percent of the cost of the
trip upon registration,
and the remaining balance
one week before the trip.
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