UWA’s Jones spends week as visiting professor in Rennes, France

LIVINGSTON, Ala.—A University of West Alabama professor recently traveled to France to spend time in the classroom with graduate students at IGR-IAE Rennes, one of UWA’s educational partner universities. Dr. Amy Jones led classes with students from 18 countries during the week-long visit.

Jones is an associate professor of digital communications at UWA and serves as director of integrated marketing communications (IMC) within UWA’s College of Liberal Arts.

IGR-IAE Rennes is the graduate school of management branch of Université de Rennes, and the oldest French graduate school of management. The school offers 40 programs in the fields of management, including marketing, finance, human resources, accounting, MBA, and management.

Jones taught conferences to MBA and finance students. Specifically, she taught courses in event planning and fundraising. She taught the courses in English to students from France, Tunisia, Brazil, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, China, Colombia, Lebanon, Italy, Mongolia, Poland, Georgia, India, Japan, United States, Nigeria, Taiwan, and Peru.

Finance courses may seem like a stretch for a communications professor, but Jones said that the skills and concepts covered in the material lead to successful careers in many different areas.

“The courses were similar to the content that UWA students cover in their IMC Capstone class,” Jones explained. Senior IMC majors at UWA complete their program with a course that includes a capstone project that demonstrates their learned skills in journalism, marketing, social sciences, and more. The capstone project also involves graphic design, marketing, advertising, web design, social media marketing and broadcast combined to generate fundraising initiatives and overall event planning.

According to Jones, UWA’s IMC graduates find work relatively easy with the skills they build through the program.

“Our IMC alumni work in advertising and public relations agencies, colleges and universities, non-profit organizations, professional sports teams, television stations, magazines, newspapers, several levels of government, and quite a few more specialized areas,” Jones said.

“This is an engaging degree program that develops graduates with convergent journalism skills, a keen ability to know and reach desired audiences, and the knowledge to research the effectiveness of media messages,” Jones explained. “Our ultimate goal is to prepare IMC students for success in the digital media age with a well-rounded, integrated education.”

For more information on UWA’s Integrated Marketing Communications degree programs, contact Dr. Amy Jones atajones@uwa.edu or 205-652-3558.

To learn more about UWA’s educational partnerships and study abroad opportunities at partner universities, contact Dr. Mark Davis at mdavis@uwa.edu or 205-652-3570.