Student Spotlight
Catching up with Gaylord's
Outstanding Seniors
By Chelsey Kraft
Gaylord College’s six Outstanding Seniors from 2018-19 – Christine Murrain, Storme Jones, Logan Webb, Emilee Rowe, Chelsea Journee and Madison Woodcock – recently reflected on their OU experiences, shared updates on their current careers and more.
Christine Murrain
Overall Outstanding Senior | Lawton, Oklahoma
During the summer of 2018, Murrain spent eight weeks in California as a Television Academy Foundation (TAF) intern at Cartoon Network. Now, the recent OU graduate is back to pursuing her dreams in Los Angeles, this time as a member of the NBCUniversal Page Program.
The highly competitive, 12-month developmental program has existed for young professionals since 1933. Its participants partake in different rotations, allowing them to experience all facets of NBCUniversal’s portfolio. Right now, Murrain is in her ambassadorship rotation, and her future rotations will fall in the categories of content, business and consumer.
“It’s a really unique and ultimately a one-of-a-kind opportunity to experience all of these things as a full-time employee,” Murrain said. “The fact that it’s rotational is incredible, and for an entry-level employee to be able to explore another job function or another business within NBCUniversal is great.”
During her time at OU, Murrain was impacted by Gaylord alumni, and she is looking forward to becoming engaged with current students now that she has joined that group.
“I am so excited to stay engaged, whether it’s delivering an admissions box to a kid in southern California, welcoming the next OU in LA program to NBC or talking to a class when I’m back at OU,” Murrain said.
Murrain said she is grateful for her time at OU. For the public relations graduate, being able to have experiences through internships and on-campus roles like chair of the Gaylord Ambassadors and the Campus Activities Council Speakers Bureau have proved invaluable when pursuing professional opportunities. In addition to her stint at TAF, Murrain was able to work the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Primetime Emmy Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards during her senior year.
“I can honestly say that a big portion of why I think NBCU selected me for this program was 100 percent the professional experiences I had,” Murrain explained. “I wouldn’t have had them in nearly the same way or nearly the same value had it not been for financial support from Gaylord College but also support of our staff and faculty as mentors.”
Storme Jones
Journalism | Yukon, Oklahoma
While in high school in Yukon, Oklahoma, Storme Jones was a bit of a self-proclaimed News 9 junkie. Now, just a few years later, Jones is working at the station as a reporter.
Jones said his advice to prospective or current Gaylord students would be to “take as many opportunities as possible,” and he is definitely an example of that. In addition to interning at News 9 as a student, he spent time working at KGOU Radio and OU Nightly and participated in the Gaylord News and Carnegie Knight News21 programs.
Through the Carnegie Knight News21 program, Jones and a group of fellow Gaylord students produced an investigative project on hate in America. The team produced a five-episode podcast, a 43-minute documentary, 12 written stories and won a Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award this year. Jones was also part of the first semester of the Gaylord News Program in Washington, D.C., which functioned as a wire service for newspapers, television stations and radio stations back in Oklahoma. The students were there during “a really interesting time” that included state funerals for President George H.W. Bush and Senator John McCain and the hearing and confirmation for Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I never could have imagined walking through the doors as a freshman the places that Gaylord College would take me and the experiences that I would get,” Jones shared. “My four years at Gaylord were full of experiential learning and the professors were just always looking for innovative ways to fill a need in the community for news and information while also harnessing the talents of students.
“I think OU and Gaylord College provided me a really strong foundation,” Jones continued. “You have to be in class to learn ethics and media law and the fundamentals of editing and writing, but beyond that building on that foundation it was really all about experiential learning and it really was for me getting out what you put in.”
Chelsea Journee
Public Relations | The Woodlands, Texas
Drawn to the fast-paced environment, Journee has found her fit in agency life.
Following her graduation in December 2018, Journee began working with Versa Creative, a digital marketing agency located in Houston, Texas. There she serves as an account manager, strategizing with clients to determine what kind of needs they have and how the company can meet those.
She found herself well-prepared for this role after her time at Gaylord College, especially due to her time as an account manager for Lindsey + Asp.
“Honestly, my experience at Lindsey + Asp was extremely valuable to what I am currently doing and pretty much is probably one of the reasons why I got my job,” Journee stated. “I’m doing almost the exact same thing that I was doing at Lindsey + Asp, just on a larger scale. I’m working with 10 clients versus when I was working on one client at Lindsey + Asp.”
When asked by students for advice of what to do as a Gaylord College student, Journee said she always encourages them to get involved in any major-specific organizations. For her, that included not only Lindsey + Asp but also the Public Relations Student Society of America at OU.
Through PRSSA, where she served as treasurer in 2017 and 2018 and as president the semester before she graduated, Journee said she learned what it would be like in the real world and made connections with other people with whom she had classes. Journee also had the chance to travel with the group, including to the national conference in Austin, Texas.
“I think Gaylord specifically gave me the resources that I needed to be able to succeed,” Journee reflected. “It gave me access to professors who were dedicated to their students and especially to the PR field, and it was awesome to see how involved all the professors were in Gaylord with continuing their own education in the public relations field.”
Emilee Rowe
Advertising | Albuquerque, New Mexico
As a young golfer, Rowe initially planned to play the sport in college. When she decided that wasn’t the path she wanted to take, she found herself at OU, following in the footsteps of her parents.
Now after graduation, the New Mexico native is getting to revisit her love of golf while working as an assistant golf pro at a course in Colorado. She worked at the golf course last summer while interning at a local advertising agency and was reminded how much she loves golf. When the course reached out to Rowe and offered to pay for her required certification if she came to work for them, she decided to accept.
“I think my golf career was always with the mindset that I was going to be a college golfer, so it was always very serious,” Rowe shared. “To kind of get to transition from being so serious to being more fun and getting to teach the juniors at the course has been so fun. It’s completely transformed my perspective of golf and just allowed me to really enjoy it.”
Eventually, Rowe hopes to step back into the advertising world, potentially by combining her interests of advertising and golf and doing advertising for her current course.
Rowe shared that two significant organizations to her at OU were Lindsey + Asp, where she started as a creative intern before working up to creative director, and Gaylord Ambassadors. For her, one aspect of her OU experience that stands out is the supportive people in Gaylord College.
“I’d always tell prospective students when I was giving tours that everybody there is there to invest in you, and I think that’s a really unique setting,” Rowe said. “There’s a lot of great colleges that prepare you really well academically and might have great extracurriculars, but I could put the Gaylord faculty against any others in the amount of investment they put into students and the amount they care about you.”
Logan Webb
Creative Media Production | Moore, Oklahoma
For as long as he can remember, Webb has been making short films and videos. Somewhere along the line growing up, he decided he wanted to pursue that passion as a career.
“Gaylord helped me foster my passion into a tangible position in the industry post-grad,” Webb said.
After deciding to transfer from another university when he realized he wanted to do more diverse media than just film, Webb found himself at Gaylord College in the creative media production program, a move he called the best decision he ever made.
During his OU experience, Webb was involved with Sooner Sports Pad as an editor and shooter for the behind-the-scenes show. He also held the title of production manager at Gaylord Hall Productions, where he shot and edited a short documentary called "First Informers: Hurricane Florence" that recently won a national communicator award.
Webb recalled his first day on the job as production manager when his producer and boss, Scott Hodgson, received a call from the National Association of Broadcasters expressing interest in Gaylord Hall Productions shooting a documentary about the impending hurricane.
“The next day, he and I were flying into the storm in South Carolina to cover a news station's coverage of the storm,” Webb explained. “It was a great example of being ready to take a challenge as it comes to you and one of the best experiences I've ever had.”
Webb also held internships with the Oklahoma City Thunder as a digital video production intern, at Dreamworks Animation as a post-production intern and at VI Marketing & Branding as a motion intern. Webb recently began working in a full-time position as an academic multimedia specialist in the Office of Digital Learning at OU.
“Gaylord set me up for success by forcing me to work in environments that reflected situations and challenges that I encountered in the real world,” Webb shared. “Not only did the classes and practicums help, but also the professors that went the extra mile to help ensure my success.”
Madison Woodcock
Professional Writing | Glenpool, Oklahoma
Madison Woodcock has always loved writing, and at OU, she kind of accidentally discovered the professional writing major that allowed her to focus on that craft after her friend encouraged her to check it out.
“I didn’t realize you could major in writing books,” Woodcock said. “I love reading and I love writing, so it was a perfect kind of thing for me … I have a pretty big imagination, and writing is a lot easier for me to get my thoughts in a clear, coherent thing … Writing really makes me feel like I can communicate well.”
While Woodcock also enjoys reading non-fiction, her writing focus is on fiction. Specifically, she enjoys writing stories that have a lot of action in them whether that’s horror, a suspense thriller or even romance with a suspense element to it. Woodcock recently published a suspense thriller on Amazon titled “The End of the Road” and is working to finish the horror novel she started in her novel class last semester.
A key part of Woodcock’s time at OU was participating on the rugby team, where she met a lot of her close friends. At OU, Woodcock said she not only learned the structure of what makes a good story and was able to improve her writing but also made valuable connections.
“My professors are all published authors and they all know people that are in the business,” Woodcock stated. “Even now that I graduated a lot of them are like, ‘If you ever need help with anything you can always reach out.’ I had to work almost full time to support myself while I was in school, and my professors were always very understanding of that.”