DePaul Download

DePaul Download is the university's own interview program, presented by DePaul's Division of University Marketing and Communications. Linda Blakely hosts. Most of her guests come from inside the institution: its president, its professors, its coaches, a law school dean. The result is a portrait of one university, told by the people running its programs. A farewell conversation with Dr. Gabriel Esteban shows how wide that portrait gets. He was named the university's 12th president in 2017 and was its first lay leader, and the discussion covers new health sciences programs, partnerships with providers such as Mount Sinai, and a climb into the top 100 of the U.S. News social mobility rankings. He calls the focus on students and mission the school's competitive advantage. Faculty supply the current-affairs angle. In 'How businesses can push back effectively against ‘fake news’', public relations professors Ron Culp and Matt Regas, co-authors of Business Acumen for Strategic Communicators, argue that understanding how business works sharpens a person's instinct to question what they hear. Their reasoning is practical: a CEO will ask where information came from and whether it can be verified, so it pays to know which questions to ask in the first place. Access runs through much of the rest. A law school dean describes a first-generation scholars program that combines LSAT preparation, mock trial, mentoring and networking, all run as a cohort. The subject of '‘Completing the narrative’: Training the next generation of journalists to cover diverse communities' is the Change Agents podcast, for which young and early-career journalists, some of them DePaul students and graduates, teamed up with activists to report on people of color making change in their neighborhoods. A participant's written reflection, read out during the conversation, describes how the workshop stretched him. Sport gets the same treatment. In 'Doug Bruno on Title IX’s 50-year impact on women’s sports', DePaul's longtime women's basketball coach, who is headed into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, talks about equal treatment for women athletes and borrows a Springsteen line, no retreat, no surrender, for a fight he says is never over. There is lighter material too: Rebecca and Paul explain how they built linked literature and media studies courses around a Harry Potter study abroad trip to the United Kingdom, down to a single fan fiction assignment that counts for both. The register is warm and admiring. Blakely asks open questions, gives guests room to explain, and ends on thanks rather than challenge. The conversations are not adversarial, and the show does not present itself as an outside view. What it offers instead is a first-hand account of what one university says it is doing, and whom it hopes to reach.