School of Communication
Face to Face with...
Mary Beauchamp Cohen
Writer
M.A., Communications, 1987
I'm a person who more or less fell into writing as a profession, so I might not be typical. My undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan (1974) was in Speech, Communication, and Theater – but mostly theater, to be honest. And then I spent the next ten years or so raising my three children and, later, teaching childbirth and family education classes at Borgess Medical Center . Writing was just something I did to explain or convince or otherwise connect with families, medical staff, or community organizations. Only when I entered graduate school in 1986 did it begin to dawn on me that being able to write clearly and well was something organizations really valued. And with the masters in Communications, I had the kind of credentials that encouraged corporations to give me a chance.
Not by a longshot! The value lies in what the credentials represent in reading, writing, discussion, experience. For me, there's a clear line of demarcation that separates the work that came before my masters and the work that followed. Before, even though I did good work, I was relying on a kind of instinct to solve problems, reach people, navigate organizations, make my point orally or in writing. Afterwards, I had an extensive body of knowledge to bring to bear on projects - and tools to decode, interpret, and analyze work at hand. What I learned in graduate coursework, from faculty, and in talking with classmates boosted me forward in a tangible way. And in a very real sense, the graduate experience gave me confidence - in my writing, in my work ethic, in my research skills, and eventually in my marketability. I was a single mom with three young children, so when Shirley Van Hoeven encouraged me to apply for a graduate research assistantship the award not only helped me to afford grad school, it gave me a leg up in practical experience. In fact, Peter Northhouse recently told me he still has the index cards I scribbled while fact-checking for his first edition of Health Communication . Since that time, I've written several books for clients - not to mention dozens of reports, video scripts, speeches, and articles. But it still makes me smile to think he's got those index cards!
Anthropologists see the world in terms of culture and community. For epidemiologists, it's all about population and disease models. In the same way, communications is my lens. It's the enduring framework that helps me to pose questions and search for answers in professional dilemmas, family matters, and world events alike. Without it, I'd be lost!