Journalism students spend two years taking courses in journalism, communications, social science, and the humanities. Classes regularly use electronic mail, the Internet, and database reporting techniques.
Public affairs reporting students travel each semester to the state capital in Nashville.
Four recent students in science communication received awards of excellence from the Society for Technical Communication for their work in ORNL Review, Pollution Prevention Awareness News, and Tennessee Agricultural Science. Extracurricular Students are active in the Society of Professional Journalists and gain practical experience working for student publications such as The Daily Beacon newspaper, the Volunteer yearbook and the Phoenix literary arts magazine. News editorial students are required to amass 300 hours of field experience with local media organizations, and many land nationally competitive internships with newspapers such as The Dallas Morning News, The Tennessean, Nashville and The Indianapolis News, and magazines such as Heart and Soul, Playboy and Southern Living. Public relations students take two years of courses in public relations, journalism, communications, business, humanities, and the social sciences. In the cases and campaigns classes, students work for real-world clients, and student work is regularly evaluated by professionals outside the state of Tennessee.