Kiphart takes job with OU’s UCM
by Katie Annarino
Scripps graduate student, Colleen Kiphart, has come back to Athens to work as the new writer/editor at University Communications and Marketing (UCM). Colleen, a self proclaimed magazine nut, is thrilled to be doing exactly what she loves. She pitches, writes and edit stories for the news section of the Ohio University website.
During her time at Scripps, Kiphart noticed the depth that the magazine format has. “I was noticing that magazines offer, a personalized, niche market publication where, the writers and editors can inject personality into the work.”
It comes as no surprise to her professors that her thesis looks at how magazines relate to online resources. “The best way to determine this, I think, would be a source study which means I would be pulling a sample of magazines and seeing how they use online sources.”
Right now this idea is in the early stages, as Kiphart was mainly focused on finding a good job after the program ended. She quickly learned it is difficult to write a thesis while job hunting.
“It’s impossible to do both. I just focused on my job hunt. There was no way that I think I could have done quality thesis work during the 4 months I was intensely hunting.”
Her job hunt was a full time, even overtime endeavor. “A 60 hour/week job.”
Her advice for graduate students is to take a four-pronged approach. First, start looking over spring break. Second, get your resume together and show it to your professors. “Run your cover letters by people in the industry.” Third, is keep at it and to stay up that extra hour and send out more resumes.
“You just need to be persistent and live in hope.” And last but certainly not least, “save your pennies.”
Kiphart says her time at Scripps made her an extremely desirable candidate. And her job-hunt as a master’s student was a far cry from her job hunt as an undergraduate student.
“This time I had confidence in my skills. The biggest thing OU gave me was a professional confidence and assurance that I didn’t have before.”
That confidence has carried her back to Athens and into a wonderful new position.
- Link directly to this Scripps Note
