Associate Professor [Dennis Chamberlin](/directory/deni-chamberlin/) was a featured speaker earlier in the year at the prestigious Media forum in Lviv, Ukraine. Chamberlin is representing the Greenlee School and Iowa State as a Fulbright Scholar at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv and reports the following:
“I am fortunate to be working this year at the school of journalism that was just ranked, this past month, as the top graduate program in Ukraine by an independent NGO commissioned by the EU. (The UCU School of Journalism does not have an undergraduate program.)
“All of my students know some English, and a few sound like native speakers. We use English in the classroom but if I meet a student on the bus I try to switch to Ukrainian. My faculty colleagues on the other hand, mostly speak Ukrainian, Polish and Russian. We combine Polish and Ukrainian for most of our conversations. My Ukrainian vocabulary is growing but I mostly use Polish and substitute as many Ukrainian words as I possibly can. My colleagues are impressed that my Ukrainian is coming along so well but it is essentially Polish that is peppered with Ukrainian nouns.
“At the beginning of October we took a 14-hour night train journey to Poltava for a week-long workshop with 24 students, half were from our school and the other half from around the country. The three faculty members presented the first day and then we turned the students loose to report and had consultations with them every evening until well past midnight. The final stories turned out so well that they were shown nationwide last Saturday evening on the First Program of Ukrainian Public Television. They are now posted on the school website and eventually will have English subtitles.
“Two weeks ago we hosted another multimedia storytelling workshop for 12 pairs of students from universities around the country. After two days of masterclasses we sent them home to work on their stories and expect to receive the projects this next week for review.
“This week we are hosting a doctor from St. Petersburg who is teaching a masterclass about post-traumatic stress and she will present a workshop tomorrow for all of the journalism students: ‘First Aid for War Correspondents.’ Although most of the Western world’s media is occupied by the circus of the American campaign, Ukraine is a country that has warfare taking place within its borders at this very minute and it occupies a prominent spot in the nation’s media. We have students who have already covered the war and others will likely be doing so in the near future.
“I am using this year to transition from traditional photographic equipment to the mobile phone for my work because I want to be able to teach our students how to best use this ubiquitous tool. Although there are limitations when shooting photos and video with a phone, it is an amazing journalistic tool and I’m using it to document our year in Ukraine on an Instagram account.
“This week I have been Skyping with Greenlee Orientation classes in Hamilton Hall to talk about the Greenlee School’s visual communication classes, as well as our study abroad opportunities.”