121: Jerod Foster, Associate Professor of Practice in the Journalism and Creative Media Industries Department, Texas Tech University

This episode of Channel Mastery is quite different than our usual episodes, but I was so impressed with the program my guest leads for Texas Tech University that I wanted to share it with all of you. Jerod Foster is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media Industries at Texas Tech University. He’s also an editorial commercial photographer focusing on outdoor and conservation.

Foster, along with a team of Professor’s of Practice, lead an adventure media course and program at Texas Tech University designed to take the students out of the classroom and ensure they understand there are career possibilities beyond of the 9-5 desk job. The programs connects students with actual clients in the outdoor industry and allows them to create media through bikepacking, camping and travel. Jerod walks us through how the program initially began, the relationships his students develop with their clients and each other, and shares stories from previous semesters.

As we continue to grow and evolve our multi channel strategies as businesses, this is a must listen episode that offers an insider’s look from someone on the ground with the next generation. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Jerod and hope you do too!

Jerod Foster is an editorial and commercial photographer focused on outdoor conservation and travel, as well as an associate professor of practice and assistant dean in the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University. His teaching strongly centers on field-based, immersive visual storytelling instruction, and his award-winning Adventure Media course involves taking students on a week-long bikepacking expedition to locations in the southwest to create short-form documentary content for different outlets and organizations in the outdoor recreation and conservation fields. His latest book, Between Two Rivers: Photographs and Poems Between the Brazos and the Rio Grande, is a collaboration with poet John Poch that celebrates the waterways and land between the Rio Grande in Northern New Mexico and the Brazos River exiting into the Gulf of Mexico.