ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNALISM & MODERN MARKETING PROGRAMS
Dr. Ken Harvey leads the Journalism and Marketing programs. He was a successful big-city newspaper editor at age 23 and then newspaper and book publisher at age 25, doubling his company’s revenue in just one year. After selling that company for a good profit, he became editor and publisher of four newspapers while completing his master’s degree and co-authoring five research studies related to improving university pedagogy, the nature of bias in the media, and the key to viral communication — even years before the Worldwide Web. At age 30 he left the profession for four years to teach at the SUNY College at Buffalo while continuing his research, experimenting with pedagogy, consulting with local newspapers, and writing a multimedia journalism textbook. His long career thereafter intermixed journalism, marketing, research and university teaching.
Over the past 10 years, Dr. Harvey has focused his professional and academic work on the impact of the internet on both media and marketing. Advertising had made traditional media profitable for 200 years but is now moving online. Dr. Harvey experimented with educational and professional websites, such as http://Virtual-University.us and http://IEI-TV.net. His professional experience, research, and experimentation provide the foundation for successful programs in Entrepreneurial Journalism and in Modern Marketing. While jobs in journalism are diminishing, jobs in marketing are growing. Entrepreneurial journalism provides students with skills in both areas that will get them a job with media or marketing firms. In marketing courses students will learn the most important skills of modern marketing — how to do video marketing, free content marketing, and native advertising, which combine for 75% of all online marketing, yet for which most organizations lack competent employees. The skills for those kinds of marketing are the same to be a successful modern journalist. And with employees trained and mentored by Immersion University, traditional media can still thrive while they transition to the internet. At the same time, our students will be taught how to launch their own successful media business.
SEMINARY FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL CHRISTIAN MINISTRY
Business professor and ordained minister Jonathan Pixler will lead the Ministry Program, which is an overlay program to any of the others. Students will need one extra trimester and to complete some extra assignments every trimester in order to earn two diplomas — one in Proactive Christian Ministry and another in a program of their choice. With the language instruction degree, a graduate of the ministry program could go overseas to earn a living teaching English while fulfilling their Christian ministry, as well. If they earn the entrepreneurial journalism degree, they can start their own multimedia website, upload their own multimedia blogs and sermons, or publish their own books. The training in either the journalism or marketing programs will teach students how to support their ministry and journalistic efforts with modern advertising strategies.
ENTREPRENEURIAL LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION
The program in Entrepreneurial Language Instruction will be taught in conjunction with the development of The Linghetti Project by partnering founders Drs. Shane Dixon and Justin Shewell, along with Linguist and IT expert Loren Szendre. Dr. Dixon and Dr. Shewell previously co-founded the Coursera-based TESOL-certification program Teach English Now! that prepares 100,000 instructors per year to teach English. Meanwhile, Linghetti is the brainchild of Szendre, whose idea it was to build a website that could teach more than 1,000 target languages in the other 1,000 languages. Only with his combination of linguistic and IT skills could he have launched such an enterprise. After earning his ABD in linguistics from the University of Chicago, Szendre began supporting his family with his more lucrative computer programming skills. Hundreds of businesses now use his specialized software and web creations. He continued to become fluent in more languages and to study literally thousands of languages before initiating his efforts to develop the online portion of Linghetti.
Drs. Dixon and Shewell then joined the Linghetti Project to begin developing a “flipped” curriculum for classroom use. With this curriculum, students will learn vocabulary, grammar and other “hard stuff” online in their own native language, then go to class to practice, practice, and practice some more with such communicative activities as music, theatre, role play and games. IU students will be taught how to teach languages and to build language curricula. They will then use those skills as part of the Linghetti Project and assist with the development of the revolutionary Linghetti flipped curriculum.
Language students will also serve at least one online teaching internship and be prepared to teach professionally online with such organizations as VIPkids, which has already contracted more than 80,000 online English teachers and is continually in search of more. Linghetti itself will also be contracting online language teachers in English and foreign languages, and IU students will have the opportunity to earn a $10,000 Linghetti franchise to launch their own language institute using the curriculum they help develop.