News Release

Contacts: Robert T. Tad Perry, Executive Director

tadp@sdbor.edu

Janelle Toman, Director of Information & Institutional Research

janellet@sdbor.edu

T: 605.773.3455

F: 605.773.5320

www.sdbor.edu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  Friday, April 3, 2009

          SDSU Takes Journalism Master’s Online

ABERDEEN, S.D. – The Board of Regents this week gave South Dakota State University permission to begin offering its master’s degree in journalism online. The M.S. degree in communication studies and journalism will be available to students via the Internet beginning this fall.

Offering the program online makes a quality professional education more accessible to working journalists and strategic communicators who would not be able to travel to the Brookings campus, university officials said. The 32 credit-hour master’s degree will likely be of interest to professionals who work in print, broadcast, advertising, marketing, or public relations. The state Labor Department expects a growing demand for managerial staff that holds a professional master’s degree in these fields.

In other action, the Board of Regents approved three new minors, each consisting of 18 credit hours:

• A minor in professional writing and rhetoric at Northern State University to prepare skilled professionals to communicate more effectively, whatever their chosen field.
• A minor in informatics at South Dakota State University to prepare students to meet the growing demands of industry for graduates who can use discipline knowledge, computers, mathematics, and statistics to provide useful information and products from raw data.
• A minor in religious studies at Northern State University to complement existing majors in history and political science, and to better prepare students bound for seminary or graduate work in religious studies.

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