
Butler Student Media
By Shannon Rostin '18
In Butler's College of Communications, learning often extends beyond the classroom, into the real world...but that doesn't mean you have to leave campus. There are many on-campus media opportunities of which any student can be a part.
Here's a short list:
- The Collegian office is home to The Butler Collegian, Butler’s student run newspaper. The Collegian office runs like a real newsroom - always lively, chaotic and on deadline. With a strong commitment to journalism, the Collegian informs, entertains and keeps students up to date on everything happening on and around campus. The Collegian publishes weekly in print and online.
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The Butler Beat and BU:30
The Butler Beat is a weekly news and interview program featuring all things news and entertainment related on campus. It is hands on and student run and operated, providing students the opportunity to be involved at every level of news and entertainment production.
BU:30 is a weekly sports show anchored and produced by students. The show features stories and interviews with Butler’s NCAA Division One athletes and coaches.
- Weekly student produced webcasts on all things Butler Sports, FREE! Students create content for updates, schedules, fan centers and more for Butler teams.
- Butler’s very own, student run and produced campus radio station. The station can be streamed on any computer, and plays mainly college /adult alternative music in addition to student artists and programming. Students are encouraged to submit their own work and programs to be featured on air.
Butler Student Media
Related Stories

Study Finds Gender Gap in the Sciences Closing
BY
PUBLISHED ON Apr 26 2018
The gender gap in the sciences may be closing, at least according to a study conducted by professors from Butler University and three peer institutions.
The study, published April 26 in the online journal PLOS ONE, looked at 10 years of undergraduate research at four schools: Butler, Creighton University, John Carroll University, and the University of St. Thomas. It found that male and female chemistry and physics students are producing research at the same rate.
"As we talk about how there are issues with women in science, at least at our four undergraduate institutions, we were not seeing any gender effect when it comes to the research outputs that the students are able to produce," said Butler Chemistry Professor Anne Wilson. "That is great."
The researchers, working together as part of a National Science Foundation grant, examined what factors affect a student to produce a research paper versus a poster versus an oral presentation. They also looked at the factors affecting students' producing work that was presented at local, regional, and national conferences, and published in peer-reviewed journals.
Rasitha Jayasekare, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Actuarial Science at Butler, provided a detailed analysis of the data using advanced statistical models.
"It was really nice to collaborate with our colleagues from other institutions and find out that a lot of us are all doing good work with undergraduates and that we value undergraduate research," Wilson said. "It's not only important to do the work but to disseminate the findings and get our students out there speaking and writing and doing all the things that liberally educated students do."
Wilson encouraged other undergraduate institutions to examination their data to see if they find a similar result. She said she had suspected that there would be no gender gap.
"It's nice to have data to back up what you think and feel in your heart," she said.
Media contact:
Rachel Stern
rstern@butler.edu
317-940-9257

Study Finds Gender Gap in the Sciences Closing
Butler and three other schools see male and female students producing research at similar rates.
Butler and three other schools see male and female students producing research at similar rates.

Butler Introduces The New York City Learning Semester
BY
PUBLISHED ON Nov 29 2017
Students will spend a semester interning and learning in Manhattan.
For more than a decade, Butler University has been offering students a chance to spend a semester interning and taking classes in Washington DC. Beginning in fall 2018, students will have that same opportunity in New York City.
Rusty Jones, Faculty Director of the Center for High Achievement and Scholarly Engagement, said the New York City Learning Semester will be offered to juniors and seniors of all majors with a minimum 3.0 grade-point average.
Butler will offer six credits of internships and nine credits of electives related to New York. The University is arranging for housing, either in the city or Brooklyn Heights.
“I think the experience provides the opportunity for significant personal and professional growth,” Jones said. “Our students will live and work in the nation’s largest city, developing valuable work experience, while also learning from the diverse, multi-cultural population in Manhattan.”
The New York program will be similar to DC in that students will work as interns Monday through Thursday for 30 hours. Two, three-credit courses will be offered during the semester in subjects such as City as Text and Public Art and Architecture. A New York offering might include an Intro to Wall Street course, Jones said.
Those classes will meet Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
In addition, three, one-credit courses will be offered on various weekends. In Washington, for example, Political Science Professor Terri Jett is scheduled to teach a Black History course that includes a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Sociology Professor Antonio Menendez has taught a class on immigration.
“Most of the students in DC choose to take all the classes,” Jones said. “I think they find them fun and they leave DC as real experts in that area.”
Jones said after students are accepted to the program, he will meet with them individually to help them line up an internship in New York. He also will be checking with Butler alumni in New York to see if they have internship opportunities.
“Butler people tend to be very loyal,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ll be excited to have Butler students come and intern with them.”
Claire Jacobi, a Sports Media and Strategic Communications major from Batavia, Illinois, spent a semester in Washington interning at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She said she strongly encourages Butler students to study in a different city, whether it be across the country or across the world.
“I loved my experience in Washington DC,” she said. “It was eye-opening, fun, and allowed me to take a huge step out of my comfort zone. It gave me real-life experiences and I feel it helped prepare me for life after college.”
Students have until February to apply for the New York trip, and Jones said he doesn’t expect to limit the number of students who can participate.
“There’s plenty of time for students to work with their advisers and figure out if this is a fit,” he said. “I want anybody who participates to make sure they stay on track with their graduation plan, and if it does fit their professional goals and their academic goals, I’d love to see them in the program.”
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822

Butler Introduces The New York City Learning Semester
For more than a decade, Butler University has been offering students a chance to spend a semester interning and taking classes in Washington DC. Beginning in fall 2018, students will have that same opportunity in New York City.
For more than a decade, Butler University has been offering students a chance to spend a semester interning and taking classes in Washington DC. Beginning in fall 2018, students will have that same opportunity in New York City.

Sustainability on the Syllabus
BY Katie Grieze
PUBLISHED ON Nov 25 2019
This story is part of a mini-series exploring The Farm at Butler, its methods, and its mission. Part four of six.
Some of the classes held at The Farm might seem obvious—a biology course about soil health, an environmental studies course looking at urban food systems, or a chemistry class studying contaminants. And yes, all of those happen at The Farm. But especially since the CUES received a major grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) last June—totaling almost $600,000—its curriculum has placed a new emphasis on weaving The Farm into a wider range of classes across campus.
Led by CUES Director Julia Angstmann, the NSF-funded project aims to promote scientific literacy by integrating STEM-related topics into non-STEM courses at Butler. Based on the idea that all people would benefit from a basic understanding of science before working together to solve societal challenges, these courses use the power of place-based experiential learning to connect students with science. Down on The Farm, where you can watch things grow and help make it happen, the class content comes alive.
As the project unfolds over the next three years, Angstmann will evaluate how campus farms and other green spaces can become centers of learning for all students. The NSF often tries to develop ways for non-STEM majors to continue engaging with science in their careers and personal lives, and by bringing religious studies, communications, health, and other disciplines down to The Farm, Butler is doing just that.
Having Faith in Nature - RL 384
Brent Hege says Christians usually interact with nature in one of two ways: as a resource for humans, or as an equal being.
“There’s a lot of ambiguity in the Christian tradition about the relationship between Christianity and the environment,” explains the Lecturer of Religion. “Some Christians think the environment is ours to use as we see fit—that we can exploit it because it’s not really as important as human beings. Other Christians think that’s totally misguided—that stewardship means respect, care, and love for the environment.”
In the ecotheology class he teaches at Butler, Hege focuses on that second part—how can humans use religion to see nature through a “loving eye,” caring for the earth and treating all things equally?
For the next time the class meets, Hege has added more place-based learning to the syllabus. In a new unit at The Farm, students will study how farmers think about their relationships with nature. Through interviews with workers at The Farm and with people who buy food from it, they’ll see how urban agriculture highlights a range of perspectives about the environment.
Hege’s research on the relationship between environmentalism and Christianity hasn’t touched directly on sustainable farming. But growing up in Pennsylvania, he spent a lot of time working on family farms and eating local produce. It wasn’t always as easy to find small-scale, sustainably-grown food when he first moved to Indianapolis, so he’s excited for the chance to work with the CUES.
“I think one of the things about farming—or even about gardening—that I find so compelling is that it keeps us connected to rhythms, cycles, and patterns,” he says. “It reminds us that, as hard as we try, we’re not really in control of everything.”
Hege wants to show students how Christianity can be a resource for addressing environmental problems. He hopes they learn to be present in their surroundings, noticing more of what they walk past every day and considering the role they play among it all.
“All of us are part of this natural world,” he says. “So no matter where we’re coming from, we have an obligation to think about how we live impacts all these other things.”
From Farm to Twitter - ORG 358
Lindsay Ems knows social media can be destructive. She knows it can be used to tear people down and target minority groups. But in her service learning class that has partnered with Indianapolis organizations every semester for more than four years, Ems focuses on how social media can empower communities.
In the course, the Assistant Professor of Communication pairs student groups with local organizations to help solve digital-media-based problems. Whether through live-Tweeting an event or developing a new campaign strategy, students help tell stories about the organizations.
The class has worked with a variety of Indy-based groups, including Cancer Support Community Central Indiana, Heartland Film, and Damien Center. They’ve partnered with The Farm at Butler about four times, and other food-related partners such as Indy Urban Acres, Keystone-Monon Community Garden, and Garcia’s Gardens.
As part of the NSF grant, the course will soon start working exclusively with farming-based groups. Ems says empowerment often comes down to food access, so it’s important for agricultural organizations to tell people what they do. She says there are so many places in Indianapolis trying to provide fresh, organic produce, but it won’t make a huge difference unless they can get the word out.
Social media can make the whole food experience more efficient. But posting on Instagram isn’t always a priority for farmers who just love being outside, so Ems says college students make a perfect match.
“When you get these organizations who are resource-strapped to begin with,” she says, “they see [social media] as something they don’t have time for. And we have students who are so good at it—so fluent and literate in the technologies.”
Erin Underwood, a senior majoring in Human Communication & Organizational Leadership, worked on The Farm team when she took ORG 358 last fall. Before the class, she knew The Farm existed, but she says she didn’t know much about it. That was exactly the issue her team worked to solve.
The group spent the semester building a social media plan for The Farm’s channels, dedicating each month to promoting a different value. They created content highlighting topics from how The Farm benefits individual and community health to how the methods used there help care for the earth. For each theme, they explained the importance of the value and told the story of how The Farm is living it out.
Erin says the chance to work with a real organization taught her to collaborate, instead of just building a plan without understanding what it needs to accomplish.
“You need to be there to learn about them, listen to them, and hear what they need,” she says. “You need to spend time understanding them so you can effectively make a social media plan in their voice. We could post the best content in the world, but if it doesn’t feel like it’s coming from The Farm, then I think it loses some of that spirit of what they really want to do with social media.”
Erin says there’s some value in classes that stick to hypothetical projects, building mock content and strategies for the sake of practice.
“But the fact that we were trusted as students to get experience with something like this made all the difference,” she says of ORG 358. “It felt like the work we did was valued and really appreciated by our community partner, which was a cool thing to see.”
Ems hopes the course helps students think more critically about their own social media use. She wants them to see that the same tools they use for posting memes, sharing animal videos, or chatting with friends can provide valuable ways to reach people in need.
Cultivating Well Being - PWB115-BI
Growing a garden does more for your health than convincing you to actually eat all the fruits and vegetables you spent weeks watering and weeding. Working in the sun and digging in the soil can improve overall well being in a variety of ways, and Butler students can earn class credit learning how.
In Cultivating Well Being, Farm Manager Tim Dorsey challenges students to think about where food comes from, how to grow healthy foods, and the role gardening can play in a lifetime of well being. After a few days of readings and discussions, students get their hands in the dirt right down on The Farm.
“We’re always looking for ways to be more a part of Butler’s academic life, so this was a good step into that for us,” Dorsey says about the class, now in its fifth year. “We’re able to engage students in a course that fills a requirement while exposing them to our space. They can see right where the food is coming from.”
Zach Madere, a senior Pharmacy major taking the class this fall, makes the most of that experience by visiting the Farm Stand each week to buy some of the produce he helped grow. Back in his kitchen, he cooks his own meals using cilantro, arugula, onions, and spinach that couldn’t be much more local.
“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” he says. “I think it’s so cool that The Farm is literally in our backyard. I think it’s awesome to be a part of that—to grow something—then to actually use what we grow.”
But the class content goes beyond just a how-to on home-grown vegetables. Students also learn about broader societal issues in agriculture and food production, considering ways they can help face global challenges.
“I’d like to see them consider how the ways we answer questions in society—specifically relating to food systems, consumer choices, and government policies—not only affect society,” Dorsey says, “but have an impact on communities, families, and individuals.”
READ MORE:
Part 1: Getting To The Root of It: How Butler’s One-Acre Farm Has Evolved In a Decade
Part 2: Farming Full-Time: How Tim Dorsey Discovered the World Through Agriculture
Part 3: A Crash Course on Nature-Focused, Hands-In-The-Dirt Growing
Part 4: Sustainability on the Syllabus
Part 5: A Model for Urban Farming in Indianapolis
Part 6: So, Where Does All The Food Go?
Explore the full Farm at Butler mini-series here
Media Contact:
Katie Grieze
News Content Manager
kgrieze@butler.edu
260-307-3403 (cell)
Innovations in Teaching and Learning
One of the distinguishing features of a Butler education has always been the meaningful and enduring relationships between our faculty and students. Gifts to this pillar during Butler Beyond will accelerate our commitment to investing in faculty excellence by adding endowed positions, supporting faculty scholarship and research, renovating and expanding state-of-the-art teaching facilities, and more. Learn more, make a gift, and read other stories like this one at beyond.butler.edu.

Sustainability on the Syllabus
As The Farm shifts to a primary focus on education, classes across the Butler curriculum find ways to use the space.
As The Farm shifts to a primary focus on education, classes across the Butler curriculum find ways to use the space.