Sarah Velasquez '07
Ryan McNerney '08
Lillie Wiley-Upshaw,'91
Robert Pacer '76
Andrew Boeing '05
Elizabeth MacDonald ’84
Sarah Velasquez '07
After graduating from Canisius in 2007 with a dual major in Communication Studies and Religious Studies, Sarah Velasquez took a year off to do service work for the New York Nativity Centers in New York City, which comprises three Jesuit middle schools in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan. She worked as a full-time development associate. She wrote grants for all three schools and helped to produce multi-media marketing materials.
After a full year in New York City, Sarah is now pursuing journalism at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. She has a Newhouse Graduate Newspaper Fellowship and Apprenticeship. For 18 months, Sarah will study at the Newhouse School while interning as a reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard. Upon completing her studies, she will work for one year as an apprentice editor at one Newhouse newspaper somewhere in the U.S.
Some of her favorite Canisius memories occurred during her junior and senior years when she was part of the CC Video Institute.
“I had the rare opportunity to interact with teachers, administrators, students, and the global community. I was fortunate to work with Ryan McNerney (who recently won a YouTube video contest) and Jennifer Eberhart (with whom I spent the summer of 2006 in El Salvador, and fall semester of the same year in London.)
“I miss the hundreds of hours we spent editing video in the labs together. CCVI was a fantastic community of talented students who taught me so much about video.
“Thanks to the comprehensive communications training I received from Canisius College, I feel adequately prepared to make my mark in the media world.”
Sarah said her goal is to write for the Religion News Service, ultimately combining her interests in journalism and world religions.
The 75-year-old service, a unit of Newhouse News and Newhouse’s Advance Publications, distributes its coverage of all religions to daily and weekly newspapers.
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Ryan McNerney '08, who was a digital media arts/marketing major and Video Institute producer, shared in a $25,000 prize for an unusual video on YouTube. To see the video and for more information, please click here.
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For Lillie Wiley-Upshaw '91, the study of communications was more than academic. She uses it each work day.
As vice dean for admissions and financial aid at the law school of the State University of New York at Buffalo, she manages admissions and recruitment for the law school.
She is responsible for communicating the law school message to applicants, which involves making presentations, speaking with students, developing advertising, marketing the program and doing diversity work (cross-cultural communication).
After graduation from Canisius, which she praised for a "wonderful overall atmosphere," Wiley-Upshaw worked for about 10 years in the Pennsylvania State University system, in student services and residence life, and earned a Master's in education. She then joined UB. She was appointed vice dean this year ('07). She had been associate dean .
Overall, she said she felt the Communication Studies major was a "great foundation" for her work in student services. She credited the late, long-time faculty member and chair, Dr. Marilyn Watt, with being a positive force in her life. Fresh out of high school, Wiley-Upshaw said Dr. Watt helped her to "gain confidence in myself." Dr. Watt "inspired her," she remarked.
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Robert Pacer '76 was a history major in 1975 when the state made the new communication major official.
Interacting with the new communication professors and their courses, coupled with an emerging interest in television, moved Pacer to begin “doubling-up” to do the major. He took a couple of communication courses each semester and then took a full-load of communication courses in the summer.
The result: He was one of three in the first class to graduate with a communication degree, in l976, as the program transitioned from a rhetoric/speech thrust towards the modern-day major.
Packer said his interest in television led him, and about eight other students, to found the student, closed-circuit television club, Canisius College Television (CCTV). But first, he recalled, he and a few other students, working with college staff, during a summer, ran wires to carry their show from the fourth floor of Old Main, through the tunnel, to monitors in the Student Center. There students could watch campus news, including items from campus ministry, and taped hockey games.
His interest in television also led to a summer internship at the public television station in Buffalo, Ch. 17, where he subsequently worked for four years, in the business office and as an assistant auction coordinator.
Formerly of Cheektowaga and now of Rochester, Pacer is president of Pacer Property Services, which specializes in taking care of vacant commercial properties. Prior to that, he worked in the oil industry for 20 years.
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Within a few months of graduation in 2005, Andrew Boeing '05 was working full-time on digital media projects.
Boeing, a Digital Media Arts (DMA) and Communication Studies dual major, had an internship in his last semester (Spring 2005) at a local digital media design and production company, which became his first position--an editor at Full Circle Studios in Buffalo.
From there, Boeing moved to the Buffalo Sabres. As the feature broadcast editor, he helps produce human-interest features on players and events. Boeing works directly with the executive producer and other broadcast personnel. His work is on display during every Sabres game, especially in the editing of the opening for each show.
He assisted the Communication Studies Department by serving as a judge for animation and video shorts for the “2007 Buffalo Digital Media Festival,” coordinated by the DMA faculty and staff in the department. Boeing indicated he was impressed by the quality of the submissions.
In recalling his days as a student in the DMA program at Canisius College, Boeing said he felt it provided him with a “great foundation” and “the basics that I needed to know” in video editing and graphic design.
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Since she was 10-years-old, Elizabeth MacDonald ’84 wanted to be a reporter.
Today, she is a senior editor at Forbes magazine in New York City, the winner of 14 major journalism awards and a panelist on several cable shows.
After graduation as a Communication Studies/English major, MacDonald returned to her native Long Island and worked at a New York City-area bank. She then became a secretary at Money magazine; she was able to work into reporting at Money, and, as she puts it, “digging in the dirt” on Internal Revenue Service stories.
She then moved to The Wall Street Journal, where she covered accounting before moving on to Forbes where she developed the annual rankings of Forbes’ “World’s Most Powerful Women” and honed her investigative journalism skills.
Although she confessed that “journalism can break your heart,” in a conversation (via an audio feed) with students in a feature/magazine writing class Spring 2007, MacDonald’s investigative reporting and persistence have led to numerous scoops. They include: the Church of Scientology’s secret $12.5 million settlement with the IRS; John F. Kennedy’s secret use of the IRS to audit political enemies; President George H.W. Bush’s use of a Houston, Texas, hotel room as his primary residence; and how Congress set up its own personal IRS office on Capitol Hill to help it prepare its individual tax returns.