Belmont is preparing to make history once again as it becomes one of the first colleges to offer a bachelor’s degree in Social Media Management.
Dr. Kevin Trowbridge created the program with the future of media in mind, and as a result, it will include courses such as Social Media Content Development, Public Relations Research, Social Media Measurements and Analytics as well as a Social Media internship.
After coming to Belmont in 2011 to teach a public relations and social media class, Trowbridge became passionate about how social media opens doors to career opportunities.
The new major was created after “seeing how social media has changed radically, but also how our students’ interest in social media has evolved,” said Trowbridge.
With some students having already “signed the form to change their major,” Trowbridge said, the announcement of the new program has students talking — one of those is sophomore Jamie Bochicchio.
The former music business major considered the switch a “no-brainer” after speaking with her adviser about wanting to focus on the digital marketing aspect of her band, Rising Reign.
“I hope that I can learn more in-depth how to market and really analyze the data that comes from social media,” said Bochicchio. “I just want to be able to know algorithms and get deeper into that.”
The major will be part of Belmont’s public relations department and will be in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
“A student who is a sophomore now would be able to graduate having taken all of these courses,” said Trowbridge, explaining how the program will begin to be implemented in the fall of 2020.
Although this has been a long time coming for Trowbridge, he’s looking forward to student engagement with the program, he said.
“It’s been so refreshing, because we spent about a year going through the development process. But now that the students are hearing about it, they are almost, like, reigniting my excitement for it.”
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This article written by Lydia Fletcher. Photo courtesy of Office of Communications.