About Jaimie

Like many of you, this is my second semester in the master's program. I'm from Houston, Texas and I came to Oklahoma as a meteorology major. I slowly realized that I didn't want to know as much as I thought I wanted to know about weather, and actually wanted to report on the affects of weather on people's lives and various other things. So, I switched my major to journalism and graduated in May 2007.

I am a graduate assistant in Housing and Residence Life. I coordinate the Housing Learning Center tutoring facility in Adams Tower. I have been employed with Housing since my sophomore year in undergrad. Unfortunately, my boss passed away during Summer 2007 from a long bout with cancer. Because I was returning for grad school, I was asked to move up in position because of my experience and commitment t0 the HLC.

My research interests stem from my strong aversion to BET programming. I don't think BET does enough to enlighten its core audience through its current programming structure. Instead it provides programming that is degrading to the people in the graphic "rump-shaking" videos and to its audience who spends their leisure time learning every dance move in the videos instead of picking up book. I think this travesty has a lot to do with BET's ownership; BET sold its soul to Viacom.

So, I plan to study African American images in broadcast, especially local television news. I am on the Mass Comm Management track, and I hope to use the concepts I learn in a local or national news management setting.