The staff of the Naugle Communication Center in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) recently launched their first podcast, The Buzz Word.

On the podcast, which launched January 2022, Communication Center consultants talk with industry professionals from Georgia Tech and the city of Atlanta about the communication skills needed in various fields. The first two episodes, for instance, examine communication between team members and communicating across diverse audiences at Zoo Atlanta.

“The Communication Center is about multimodal communication,” said Eric Lewis, the podcast’s host, a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow, and a professional consultant in the Communication Center. “By expanding into podcasting, we’re showing the depths of the knowledge we have to offer and that we can help people with more than just their papers or résumés.”

Serving students and faculty

Students often come to the Communication Center for the first time during their final semester looking for feedback on materials they prepared for their job search, Lewis said. Hearing the podcast might help overcome the mistaken belief that the Communication Center is simply remedial and encourage them to come sooner.

“It is intimidating to go to someone you don't know and say you would like some help,” Lewis said. “No matter how talented someone is at communication, everyone needs to work with others. That's just what communication is.”

Georgia Tech faculty can also benefit from the podcast and may find a 30-minute episode as an apt replacement for an introductory lecture on a common communication topic.

The Communication Center also provides professional training for its consultants. As the podcast grows, Lewis plans to build a team of consultants to produce and host the show. This will give them experience in podcast production, a skill that can serve them at a multitude of jobs.

Caitlin Kelly, director of the Naugle Communication Center, co-hosted the podcast’s second episode.

“We're always trying to help students develop transferable skills,” Kelly said. “The podcast gives them great examples of what it looks like to use what they learn here at Georgia Tech after graduation.”

Connecting on campus and in the community

Lewis produces and hosts the podcast. A member of the Brittain Fellows’ Podcast and Curricular Innovation Committee, he became interested in the medium when searching for multimodal instructional tools while teaching first-year writing to incarcerated students as part of the Moreau College Initiative (MCI) in Fall 2019. MCI is a degree-granting program inside Westville Correctional Facility in Westville, Indiana, run by Holy Cross College.

By inviting experts from across Georgia Tech to appear on the show, Lewis is building and improving connections between the Communication Center and other programs on campus and beyond.

“Listeners get to hear how people in different fields and roles think about communication, and maybe that changes how they think about it in their own professional lives,” Kelly said.

While the podcast’s topics are all related to communication, they are not strictly for communicators, Lewis added. Management students could benefit from learning about team charters and communications; international relations students might enjoy an episode on intercultural communication.

This interdisciplinarity supports both the School’s goal to develop well-rounded global professionals with diverse humanistic perspectives and also the Communication Center’s mission to help students further cultivate their written, oral, visual, electronic, and non-verbal communication skills.

A new episode of The Buzz Word publishes monthly on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellowship is administered by the Writing and Communication Program in LMC. It offers an opportunity for emerging scholars to develop innovative teaching and scholarship in writing and communication in their role as faculty members.

The Naugle Communication Center is a part of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary. The Naugle Communication Center aids students from the Georgia Tech community with communication skills and projects related to their classes, careers, and civic and community lives.