Being a Black woman in America there are few instances in which we see ourselves represented in a positive light whether in the media, in products, or in the classroom. I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Ashley Torrence in which she discusses how to break in to the world of collegiate teaching in Mass Media and how the lack of representation fuels her drive to teach. Dr. Torrence is a professor at Clark Atlanta University by way of Charleston, South Carolina. Dr. Torrence received her BA in Speech Communications and in Political Science from the Clemson University, her MA in Political Communication from the University of New York, and received her Doctorate in Mass Communication and Media Studies with an area of specialization in Political Communication, specifically Agenda Setting and News Framing from Howard University. She has taught at several institutions having covered subjects such as News Writing, Campaign Communication, Media and Advertising, Philosophy and Ethics in Media, Survey of Media and Society, and Social Media. Her love of politics and newspapers were very influential to her current success. Dr. Torrence prefers written news over any other source of news and therefore reads several newspapers a day. Although she enjoys technology, she prefers the hard copy of a newspaper for the immersive experience as well as to survey the culture of the newspaper. Aside from teaching Dr. Torrence loves to shop, travel, and spend time with her dog, Honey Pie. Check out the full interview below!
What was your path to get to this point in your life such as education and work experience?
Dr.Torrence: Well, I received my undergraduate degrees from Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. I have a bachelor’s in Speech Communications and in Political Science. Right after, I finished undergrad, I went straight in to a master’s program at the University of New York. I got my master’s degree in Political Communication. I knew that I liked communication, and I knew that I liked politics. I wasn’t sure how I was going to combine the two, which is part of the reason I just went and got my master’s degree to buy me some time. Then particularly when you are in the Liberal Arts, you find out that an advanced degree is probably to your benefit. When I was in New York, I had the opportunity to work in the New York Legislature, and I really, really enjoyed that. I worked with one of the members, did a lot of things behind the scenes, did some writing, I did a lot of research, community engagement, that kind of thing. I said “wow, I really like this.” But, when I was in a master’s program I also had a graduate assistantship, and I assisted one of my research professor’s with his class and I got to do some teaching and I was like, ‘wow, I really like this.” So that was always in the back of my mind, that I liked teaching at the collegiate level, because I got to do research, but I was like “ehh, I don’t know about that. I would rather work in politics.” So, I continued to work in New York, but I didn’t have any family in New York,I’m from the south so I wanted to be closer to my family and then I had a boyfriend in South Carolina, so I said “I’m going home.”. S o I left New York, I left the job that I loved very very much in the Legislature and I moved to South Carolina thinking, “Okay, I’ll just go to South Carolina and do the same thing.” Well, New York is a Democratic, far more progressive state, in terms of women, and women of color. So when I got to South Carolina they were like “Oh, we don’t really need you.” So, I ended up working in state government, for the Social Security Administration, “Hated it.” Always do what you love. It was just a job I totally hated, I didn’t like it, and I wasn’t making that much money. There was a technical school in Charleston, where I was, and they needed someone to teach a class, adjunct. So I was like “I’ll give that a try” because you only needed to have a master’s degree. It was during the Fall semester, so I was like “That’s a little extra Christmas money”, that’s what I was thinking. I did it, and I taught there, and I thought, “I really, really like this. I could do this full time.” So every day at my social security job, I looked for jobs in teaching until I found a job in upstate South Carolina at the University of South Carolina in Spartanburg. They gave me an opportunity to teach, even though I didn’t have an abundance of experience and I was like “Okay yeah, I really like this. I can do this.” Then I started teaching, and once you start teaching, you realize very quickly, that if you have any desire to become tenured, you’re going to need a terminal degree. So, after for two years, I thought “It’s either now or never that I’m going to quit work, go to school and get my PhD or try to work and go to school at the same time.” I talked it out with my parents and prayed about it, they [parents] were like listen I don’t have any kids, I’m not married, I hadn’t bought a house so the best thing for me to do was to go to school full time. So I applied to the PhD program at Howard, and I stopped working and went back to school full time. I got my PhD in Mass Communication and Media Studies, and my area of specialization is in Political Communication, specifically Agenda Setting and News Framing. At Howard, I had a great opportunity to also get my certificate in Collegiate Teaching. Long story short, that’s how I ended up teaching, and I love it.
What is the recommended experience needed to become a media professor?
Dr. Torrence: You don’t have to have a PhD, but I highly encourage you to get a PhD. Particularly if you are a woman, particularly if you are a woman of color, there are a number of opportunities that exist for us because there are so few of us. The last statistic I heard, this could have changed, but only 4% of all PhD’s regardless of subject area are held by African Americans. So we are very short in number. You don’t think that because you are at a HBCU, and most of your professors have PhD’s, but if you go to White schools or other schools most people that have terminal degrees are usually not people of color particularly women. I would suggest you do that, but by all means you can teach with a Master’s degree. I don’t know of any institutions at the collegiate level that will allow you to teach with less than a Master’s degree. So if you are interested in teaching, particularly at the collegiate level, I would encourage you or anyone else for that matter to get a Master’s degree by all means and if at all possible try to get a PhD as well. That will give you a leg up and really be beneficial to you. A lot of times colleges are really interested in research and you really learn the process of research with a terminal degree, and it gives you an area of specialization.
Do you feel becoming a professor was more challenging due to the fact you never worked for a newspaper?
Dr. Torrence: No I don’t. What’s interesting is that teaching journalism like Intro to Journalism or News Writing, this is the first time I’ve ever taught these classes and that’s here at Clark. Every other institution I’ve worked at I have specifically taught in my areas of specialization. I don’t think it’s been a disadvantage to me, I do think that it has given me a very sort of novel perspective. I think that, if I had worked at a newspaper and been a journalist, then perhaps my approach to teaching journalism would be somewhat bias, but I come in from a very objective view. Particularly because I studied journalism. My PhD focused on Agenda Setting and News Framing, so I understand the presence of bias that can exist in newspapers because I studied those things thematically. I think that gives me a very novel perspective and it’s how I encourage you all to approach journalism without bias, even though that is impossible because we are all human beings. We feel certain ways about certain things, and you can’t disconnect from that. I think not having worked in a newsroom, but having studied newspapers and newspaper cultures, I think it allows me to teach more objectively than if I had worked in a newsroom. I’m sure that if I had worked for a newspaper there may be some perspectives that I don’t have, that I would have. I think not having the traditional newspaper background has really been beneficial to me.
Has there ever been an attempt to discredit your knowledge of your field because you didn’t work in a newsroom, and if so, how did you respond?
Dr. Torrence: That’s a good question. Not necessarily discredit my knowledge because I didn’t work in a newsroom, because like I said Clark is the first place I’ve taught subjects like News Writing, but being a woman, being a woman of color and aging gracefully, looking younger than I am. This is the first time I have taught at a HBCU. I have faced challenges even though not directly, I knew there were challenges to my credentials because I was young looking, because I was a woman, and because I was a woman of color. At most institutions where I have taught, when I walk in to the classroom, I am the only Black person there. Not that I am the only female, or the only African American professor they have, I am the only Black person in the room. I have taught a number of classes at a number of institutions where I’m the only Black person in the room or I’m the only Black professor in a department, or I’m the only Black professor with a PhD in the department, teaching next to people who don’t have the qualifications that I have. I also know when students ask me questions because they genuinely want to know, they genuinely don’t understand and I know when people are asking me questions because you want to know what I know and if I know. I have encountered that at PWI’s. For them I know it was a culture shock. You go to a predominately white institution, where there are less than 5% minority students. You used to being in classes where everybody looks like you, relatively thinks like you, including the professor. Then you have someone who comes in like me and I don’t fit the necessary stereotypical professional mold. That can be a little bit unnerving or make some people uneasy. They would sometimes challenge me on things or ask me questions, that my colleagues wouldn’t be faced with. I could only reach the conclusion that they were doing so because I was Black, because I was a woman, and because they probably thought I was younger than what a professor should be. Or perhaps because I got my PhD from a Black institution, even though Howard is more multicultural than it is a traditional HBCU. I say that only because I went to Howard sort of looking for this all Black experience, that I never had in my life, besides church and family reunions. Anyway I tell people that it wasn’t until the second semester of my second year at Howard that I even had a Black professor. People think “Okay, it’s Howard, it’s all Black everything” but no, Howard is a little bit different. So I’ve never had people challenge me because I didn’t teach News Writing, but I have felt like I have been challenged because of my perceived age, because I am a woman, because I am Black and because I am probably the only person of color they ever had to teach them.
What would you say was your biggest challenge in getting to where you are now, and how did you overcome it?
Dr. Torrence: The PhD was a challenging process, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Not challenging because of rigorous course work, because I have always been a good student. When you go through the PhD process, you have a committee of five people that you have to convince, that you are ready to write your dissertation. Then you have to convince these people that what you want to spend the next 2 to 4 years of your life writing about and researching is worthy of studying. You have all these people of different personalities and backgrounds, even though you put your committee together and you try to get people who have some degree of cohesiveness, that won’t fight among each other, that’s still a challenging thing. Working through the politics of the PhD process, and then once I developed a topic, selling my committee on it. That was hard to do. I was in Washington D.C at a HBCU and I had professors and members on my committee who were very involved and had a lot of history with the race relations in America, civil rights in America. So when I came in wanting to write about Strom Thurmond who was this staunch conservative segregationist, a man who ran on separate but equal in this country and I wanted to write about the fact, that I didn’t think that the media covered him objectively or that they were fair to him, these Black people were looking at me like “You want to do what?” and even the white people on my committee. So that was the most difficult part, selling the validity and the necessity of my PhD topic. Once I got through that, everything else sort of worked itself out.
What would you say has been the highlight of your career?
Dr.Torrence: You guys, my students, even though there are days when I want to pull out every strand of my blonde hair. It’s definitely my students. Particularly the moments when I see you all get it. A lot of things we talk about in class, I’ll see looks on faces and I’ll see that half the class gets it and half the class won’t get it. Then those who don’t get it won’t always raise their hands. Then there are moments when we are talking about something and I can tell everybody gets it or somebody gives an example that really makes sense. Or something that we talked about a month ago, somebody will relate it to what we’re talking about today. So what I’m teaching is really sticking in their heads. They’re remembering it and not just enough for the quiz or for the test. So those things are very very important to me. I find the greatest satisfaction in this and I hope my students do as well, the value of seeing someone in front of a classroom that looks like them. That says “If I wanted to, I could do that too” because I didn’t have that. I didn’t have a Black teacher grades 1-12, not until the second semester of the second year of PhD at Howard that I had a Black professor. It was not until 19 1/2 years of school that I had a Black professor or teacher, that I had someone that looked like me, teaching me. So I just knew from that moment. I was like “Nah this can’t be the way that it is.” Black people are smart, we are great, so why aren’t there more of us teaching? I know part of it was because my parents worked so hard to try to provide the best education for me and often times that meant putting me in school where there were not a lot of people that looked like me. Unfortunately, their schools tend to get better funding, better resources. The greatest reward that I get in teaching and I hope that students get too is that you can look like me and be a professor. You can be a professor and still be cool, I mean I think I’m cool. Everyone is not an old White man with a bunch of pens in his pocket and books on his shelf. So that is really important and rewarding to me.
Are there any organizations you would recommend to an aspiring media professor?
Dr.Torrence: Definitely AEJMC, trying to go to conferences, National Communication Association, and definitely getting internships. I interned several times. When I had the opportunity to intern my junior year of undergrad, I interned at the mayor’s office in Charleston, South Carolina. There’s a lot of communication that goes on in politics. Everything a politician does is scripted, down to the color tie that they where, the organizations that speak to, all of that is scripted. Then I interned again when I was in my Master’s program. Definitely internships, that way you get the opportunity to meet other people that are doing that can give you different perspectives. I give you my perspective as a woman, as a younger woman, and as a woman of color, I have one perspective, but if you talk to my colleagues who are men, or who are older you will get a different perspective. So I think that part is very important. So try to get as much exposure as you can and do your research on different schools especially if you are looking to go in to the professoriate. Howard had a wonderful opportunity where you could get your degree and then you could earn your certificate in Collegiate Teaching. Teaching at the college level is not like teaching in grade school. Teachers have to be certified, the college level you don’t have to do that. However your grades, your writing, your research, publications, conferences those kinds of things matter more because you don’t have to have a license to teach at the college level, so you have to have other things to supplement that.
What key experience solidified your decision to teach?
Dr. Torrence: A program at Howard called, Preparing Future Faculty or PFF. In PFF we took classes about the history of higher education and those kinds of things in the pursuit of earning a certificate in Collegiate Teaching in addition to our degree. Another component of it was, after you finished your coursework you had to find another institution of higher learning around the country that would allow you to come and teach at their university. Howard had partnerships with schools in California, Texas, Boston, Georgia, and several others. We had to figure out places we wouldn’t mind teaching at, because you had to up and move there to teach for a year. I had the opportunity to partner with Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. What was so novel about that was because they were a small liberal arts school, and I was very interested in liberal arts and they are one of four schools in the country that offers an undergraduate degree in political communication. I was like “Lord, this is the place for me” I love politics, I love communication, I’m studying Political Communication and they offer it to undergrads so I could go there and teach it. Of all the schools I interviewed with, they are where I wanted to go and be the most. They were a private rich school. Tuition there in 2010 was $48,000 a year. These kids were paying $200,000 for an undergraduate degree. I have four degrees that didn’t cost $200,000. Anyway, I interviewed and I was allowed to do my residency at Emerson and I got to teach two classes a semester. I got to work with very renowned faculty in my area of specialization, Political Communication. They helped me with my dissertation, I got teaching experience, and I got to work with people who were teaching my ideal subject matter, Political Communication and they paid me. They paid me more than any other job that I had ever earned. They paid me $50,000 to come and do my schoolwork essentially. It was a wonderful, wonderful opportunity and I did that for one year. I formed such relationships with them and they were very much interested in my research and what I was doing and so they asked me if I wanted to come back again to finish my dissertation. That was probably the most beneficial experience I’ve ever had. I say all of that to say, do your research when you’re looking for Master’s and PhD programs. Find out what they have beyond just a master’s degree. Can you get a degree and a certificate? How hard is it to get two degrees? Do they give you more than just coursework and do they provide you with opportunities to get real practical experience? “You couldn’t tell me nothing.”
Are you content with your decision to teach?
Dr.Torrence: Yes. I absolutely love teaching. I do not love the politics of faculty positions. There’s a lot that comes along with it. There are trends now in higher education where there are less tenure track positions being offered, so that’s a little bit disheartening. Those are challenges that I’m dealing with but I love teaching. I love teaching at the collegiate level and I will do this in some form or fashion for the rest of my life. I just don’t like navigating the job process.
What is the most important piece of advice you would offer to someone interested in becoming a media professor?
Dr. Torrence: Don’t pay for grad school. Particularly if it’s someone like you or really any Clark student. Even though I hate this term, you are a minority. That is something you need to recognize as something not necessarily as a disadvantage. It’s already used against you, so make it work for you. You are a minority and there are these institutions that don’t have a lot of students that look like you. They need students that look like you. So you attending those institutions is as much for you as it is for them and recognize that. If you decided to go to UGA, which is by all means a great school, and I’m sure you’d get a stellar education there, you’ll learn a lot from that institution but the institution will also stand to learn a lot from having you there too. They don’t have a lot of young Black women so that’s a perspective they are not always familiar with. They don’t recognize the challenges that young Black women or young Black men face. Institutions of higher learning have an obligation to sort of recognize these challenges and seek to address them. Use the minority aspect, which I hate to your benefit. In that regard don’t pay for school, because you’re needed too much to pay for school. Of course you have the grades because you can’t just say “Oh I’m Black, and I’m a woman, so I should be let in” of course you have to earn good grades. But if you have good grades, in some instances decent grades, and you’re Black, and you’re a woman and you’re committed then it shouldn’t be a reason you have to pay for a Master’s or PhD.
I thoroughly enjoyed my interview with Dr. Torrence. Her experiences of being able to learn under renowned professors, as well as gain work experience with the added benefit of being paid really opened my eyes to the possibilities one has as a student. Now having a better understanding of the extreme lack of PhD holders in the Black community, I now feel a certainty in deciding to go beyond a Master’s degree. Ultimately, hearing the journey, challenges, yet overall satisfaction of Dr. Torrence has not only inspired me but solidified my desire to teach in the field of Mass Media.