This Ibrahima

My name is Ibrahima Ndoye and I’m from Senegal, West Africa. I have been a resident of Oklahoma for six years. I ‘am a graduate student at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, specializing in strategic communication.

My interest in Mass Communication was triggered off by my experience in the wireless industry while working for Cingular. This job has allowed me to understand the importance of communication; and how interactions are handled in general, within one of the fastest growing business sectors. In fact, I had the opportunity to be involved in three strategic mergers within this company. Cingular bought former at&t Wireless and Suncom; a local wireless company in Virginia. Now, as we all know Cingular has become the New AT&T.

Each of these mergers involved particular elements as far as communicating with the customers and at the same time setting their expectations are concerned. This undertaking required skills; all the more that customers do not prefer to change providers. The task was to make it seamless at all levels. The first merger was when Cingular bought at&t Wireless. It was more than twenty million customers that were involved. Our duties were challenging as we had to convince all these customers to join the new company regardless of their contracts. We had to take classes every week to sharpen our communication skills as the company could not afford losing those customers. With a new structure, we had to make it seamless so that nobody would be lost in the changes in pricing, contracts and the way calls were to be handled by customer service.

Strategic Communication is, however, my preferred branch because it includes nearly all the major elements of the field. I’m keenly interested in acquiring theoretical knowledge and practical skills in this area and especially in persuasive communication. I would hope to learn a great deal from the diverse faculty of the Gaylord College. One interesting element is that the scope of the discipline turns broader and broader as we take the core classes. Just to say that possibilities are growing with the different choices I’m coming across.

I’m also interested in research in the field of communication. This would later allow me to indulge in the PhD program. It might be appropriate to mention that I’m reasonably familiar with research. My experience in previous studies has allowed me to acquire the material that I need for research. I have two graduate degrees; and each of them gave me the opportunity to sharpen my skills. The first one was in English (American Literature and Civilization). As English is not my native language, I had to study it as far as I could in order to manage the specificities of the language.

I’m familiar with Afro-American literature. Novels such as Sula, the Sisters of Brewster Place and Song of Solomon from Toni Morrison have a great influence on my perception of the difficulties facing minorities. I would not forget Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and many more. My second degree was in Political Science-International Affairs.

My thesis in English is entitled Poetry and Democratic Nationalism in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The reason why I did my work on Whitman was that he was an advocate of democracy and inclusion in a period when America was in turmoil right at the beginning of the exclusion of women, blacks and other minorities. His poetry is universal and embraces the cosmos. In my international studies I attempted to probe the Dynamics of Political Instability in Subsharan Africa.

In my country I was in a pre-doctoral class in English and got involved in research and teaching. My knowledge of several languages, mainly English and French, which I can teach at higher levels, has shaped my career as I ended up being a translator and interpreter right before coming to the US. I worked with the US Army Special Forces. They came to Senegal to give instructions to a Senegalese battalion that had to go to a peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone. My job consisted of translating military classes and conversations from French to English and vice versa.

Another important element that has driven me to study communication is the opportunity to draw comparisons on how individuals communicate within different cultures. This will involve advertising, for instance.

The challenge would be to consider doctoral studies in the field as there is a need to bring the expertise to our countries in Africa to help in teaching and training the future actors in the communication field.