Erin Cooper, ’17

For the past year I have been working as a research associate at a public affairs firm in the Washington, D.C. metro area. I am now starting as a full time graduate student at American University to attain my M.A. in Political Communication.

When interviewing for my job at the public affairs firm, my employers were definitely impressed with the wide range of courses I was able to take within a communications field from the SJU COM Department. Since the program covered everything from research to design I was able to demonstrate a wide variety of different skills needed for the position. After almost a year working full time I really started to miss being a student and started to search for continuing education programs in DC. I found the graduate program for Political Communication at American University to be the best fit for what I wanted for myself, and with the help of my amazing former SJU professors I was able to get the recommendations needed to for a strong application.

My SJU education gave me a lot of opportunities to learn my niche, especially in the COM Department. From my first COM class to the last I was given the creative freedom and collaborative environment to be able to explore aspects of my interests that I was then able to showcase. My very first class freshman year gave me a blog that I could then use in my portfolio which helped me gain internships and other invaluable opportunities to practice my skills and make connections. The smaller size of the program allowed the professors to get to know what their students really cared about, which is how my advisor was able to connect me with an opportunity at the 2016 RNC for a media company.

I was an Editorial intern with GreenPhillyBlog.com, I was a Communications intern for former NJ Governor Chris Christie, I worked with Talk Media News at the 2016 RNC, and I was a press intern for a congressman in the Philly area. I studied abroad in Madrid, Spain for a semester as a junior. All of those opportunities provided me with different skills and experiences that helped form who I am today. The experiential learning activities allowed me to bring new ideas and projects to my program.