The College of Communication recently announced a partnership between two student-led communication organizations — the video production group, Blue Roll Media, and the strategic communication agency, five fountains — that will begin in the Fall 2026 semester.
The partnership will involve classes hosted on Tuesday nights by Amanda Stevenson-Holmes, strategic communication professor and faculty advisor to five fountains, alongside another professor to be determined at a later date.
“We’re hoping that the working together of the two groups will give additional structure, more credit, but also advanced videography skills to both groups,” Stevenson-Holmes said. “We always want the students to leave five fountains or the Blue Roll experience with good portfolio pieces. Depending on the number of students and the number of clients, they would [ideally] have four to five clients, so very multi-faceted [with] multiple pieces added to their portfolio by December of next year or this year.”
Previously, five fountains functioned as a three-credit elective course in the communications department. The program works to provide communications students with real-world strategic communications experience while also delivering services like brand image management to clients.
Stevenson-Holmes highlighted the benefits she has seen five fountains bring to the professional lives of participating students.
“We’ve had our executive directors, our leadership board [and] even finance majors who have gone on to be project managers, and they can always answer interview questions very easily about how they balance multiple needs [and] how they deal with challenging situations,” Stevenson-Holmes said. “Our clients come to them with real-life problems, challenges and their marketing communication needs, and the students work through them. There is a unique dynamic to the client teams, and just the interpersonal relationships and the friendships that they build in the agency that you wouldn’t normally get in a normal class.”
Sophomore strategic communication major Ava Coy has been on the board of five fountains for three semesters and attributes many of the skills she has gained to the program.
“Whenever I tell employers, it’s something that they’re super impressed by, because it’s pretty rare to have something like that at other schools,” Coy said. “[You get] hands-on experience learning how to work with different personalities and a larger group of people sharing ideas with each other. [You also gain] adaptability, because lots of different things get thrown at you, and you have to adapt quickly and figure a different plan out if something doesn’t work.”
Blue Roll previously functioned as a club, while allowing students to get paid for their experience. Members have aided in producing content like documentaries and social media visuals, as well as providing live coverage. Now, participating students will be able to receive credit for their work.
Eric Hahn, assistant professor of creative media and entertainment, works as the faculty advisor for the program.
“I think students have had [a] really great opportunity to not only get hands-on the shoots, but to edit these projects and have something awesome to include in their portfolios [and] to share with future employers or clients, if they’re going to the freelance world,” Hahn said. “It’s been such a great opportunity for students to get that hands on experience, to interact with clients, have some stakes, where these are clients who are paying and expecting results and then also graduating with not just the work they’ve done in the classroom, but all of these great examples of material they’ve shot and edited for real clients.”
Though the new partnership will bring a more behind-the-scenes look to Hahn’s role, he expressed his excitement at seeing Blue Roll students grow in the future.
Applications for the fall class closed on March 27 and offered a choice between applying to either program or open placement. Stevenson-Holmes stressed that all applicants should have a good chance of receiving placement in the program due to the number of graduating students leaving both programs this spring.