School of Communication

Face to Face with...

Cheri Bales

President, Hannah/Gold Communications

M.A., Communications, 1994

Cheri, since you were already working in the field when you earned your masters degree, what did you gain from graduate studies that you couldn't have acquired through experience?

The classes I took to earn my masters in Communication made it possible for me to move in different directions, and the coursework seemed the best fit for me career-wise. At the time, I was a Communications Specialist for the Kalamazoo Public Schools, although my undergraduate degree was in Business Administration. The graduate experience helped me combine a business background with hands-on communication skills to launch Hannah/Gold Communications (a full-service agency that specializes in working with nonprofit organizations and educational institutions). The coursework emphasis on listening, small group process, and organizational communication methods helped prepare me to provide employee training and development, focus groups, and other communication services in response to client needs.

Can you give me an example of when you've seen classroom experience come to life in a professional context?

Just about every day and in every encounter! Now that I am teaching undergraduate classes at Western in addition to handling client projects, I have a much clearer picture of the benefits of learning about communication. Take, for example, nonverbal communication. Research has shown that simply learning about nonverbal communication in an undergraduate class can improve a person's abilities to encode and decode nonverbal messages. That means that even one class can help any of us become better at interpreting people's behavior, at "deception detection" (as we call it in class), and at understanding and interpreting the actions, facial expressions, and movements of colleagues and clients. Interviewers look for exactly these kinds of communication capabilities to help them differentiate between qualified candidates. And I use these skills in both my personal and professional life.

It's that way with everything you learn. What I learned about planning, flow charts, and event management in COM 450 (Public Relations) shows up in a smoother-running organization and greater professional competence in every undertaking.

What do you tell students when they ask you about graduate school?

I strongly encourage students to work while going to graduate school. I've seen many talented individuals who are over-qualified academically but under-qualified experience-wise. With the internships and volunteer opportunities available - especially here at Western - there are plenty of ways to add professional hands-on experience to solid academic preparation.

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