Editors' Notebook

EllaMae Reiff
DTN Content Editor

EDITOR'S NOTE: We're not ones to navel-gaze much in the DTN newsroom. Our content is focused on your profession -- farming -- not ours. But the piece below, a heartfelt reflection by our EllaMae Reiff, content editor and part of a multi-generational farm, speaks to a real and frankly concerning issue going on across campuses and the country at large.

Journalism as a profession and as a line of academic study is shrinking. Fewer newspapers, and fewer independent journalism businesses of all stripes, means less need for graduates with journalism and communications educations.

There's plenty to talk about around that at a macro level -- what it means to an informed populace, to democracy, to community. There's a micro-level, personal, cost to it as well, as Reiff thoughtfully shares here. -- Greg D. Horstmeier

**

Sometimes the best decisions you make are the ones you almost didn't.

My parents asked me to consider and visit Purdue University during sophomore year of high school. Honestly? I didn't want to go. I had my list -- UGA, Texas A&M, Auburn and Oklahoma State. Purdue felt like a backup plan as it was two hours from home and in-state.

Skip to April 2019: My dad scheduled a meeting with someone from the Agricultural Communication program, and we just talked. About what I wanted to study, about how I learned best, about what kind of college experience I was looking for. And somewhere in that conversation, everything clicked.

I left campus that day knowing. Just knowing. This was where I was supposed to be.

I chose Purdue specifically because of the Agricultural Sciences Education and Communication (ASEC) department. I'm not someone who did well in giant lecture halls. I needed to be able to raise my hand and ask questions. I needed professors who knew when I was struggling before I even said anything. I needed a community, not just a classroom.

That's exactly what ASEC gave me.

I spent two of my three years working in the department office, which taught me more about professionalism, communication and relationship-building than any textbook ever could. Even when I wasn't working, I'd stop in constantly -- "Quick question about this assignment," "Can I get your opinion on this internship/job," "What do you think I should do about ..." The door was always open. Someone always had time.

Everything I am professionally, so much of who I am personally -- it traces back to those three years in that department. To those hallways. To those people. The career I have today? I wouldn't have it without ASEC.

And early Tuesday morning, Jan. 27, I found out it's closing. The Agricultural Education program continues, but the Communication side is done and closing in June.

I get it. I understand how these decisions get made. I understand low enrollment. I understand budget constraints. I understand that decisions like this are complicated and painful and necessary.

But understanding it doesn't make it hurt less.

It hurts knowing that future students won't get what I got. Won't have those relationships, that mentorship, that tight-knit community. Won't work in that office or have those random hallway conversations on the third floor of Lilly or go up to the secret fourth floor to work on projects.

To my ASEC family -- the alumni, the faculty, the staff, the current students: We know what we had. We know what that place meant. And even though the department is closing, we carry it with us. In how we work. In how we lead. In how we show up for others the way ASEC showed up for us.

Boiler up. Forever and always.

EllaMae Reiff can be reached at ellamae.reiff@dtn.com

Follow her on social platform X @ellareiffareiff

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