Field Trips of Dreams
Baylor journalism students are taking to the road to learn from the pros
Mackenzie Grizzard wanted to be more than just a name on another resume or one of hundreds of online applicants for a position. To accomplish that, the Baylor student knew she needed some face time with those who make the hiring decisions.
That’s why Grizzard, who graduated in May 2026 with a journalism degree from Baylor’s Department of Journalism, Public Relations and New Media, went on two career field trips sponsored by the department. The recurring trips, planned for each fall and spring, are excursions designed for students to gain immersive, timely and relevant experiences and to get them in front of company executives who could be in the market for a recent graduate. Many of those executives are themselves Baylor graduates, such as Amber Tierce, Chevron’s general manager of corporate affairs for the eastern United States.
“These field trips are for Baylor students by Baylor alums,” said Tierce, who has been at Chevron for nearly 20 years after 10 years at the global communications firm FleishmanHillard. “We were there. We were all in their shoes once.”
Spring 2026: Houston
Tierce, a member of the journalism department’s Board of Advocates, was one of 12 professionals in Houston who spoke to 30 or so Baylor students in March 2026. The Baylor group spent the day in a meeting room in the offices of the Houston Texans NFL team at NRG Stadium, and company representatives made presentations there.
“We treated NRG Stadium as our home base and the speakers came to us,” said Tierce, who earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism at Baylor. “That was really helpful in having an efficient day and leaving more room for networking and hearing from our guest speakers.”
Some of those speaking to the students on the Houston trip included Patti Smith, who headed up the FIFA World Cup Houston Fan Fest, John Schwartz, Baylor graduate and lead communications advisor at Chevron, and several members of the Houston Texans front office, including team president Mike Tomon.
“A number of Houston Texans staff are Baylor graduates, so they were the first I reached out to because I knew they would be willing to help,” said Tierce, who arranged the speaking lineup. “And then we brought in individuals from nonprofit, from corporate, from broadcast, so that way, the students could have really a well-rounded view of what’s possible.”
The Houston speakers also included Lisa Schwartz, a Baylor journalism graduate, Board of Advocates member and co-owner of the Houston/International office of Jostens Yearbook Publishing Company, which publishes the Roundup, Baylor’s award-winning yearbook, as well as some broadcast and multimedia journalists, including Melissa Cook Wilson, a Baylor graduate, Board of Advocates member and the morning news anchor at Fox 26 television.
“Melissa is very well-loved in Houston as a broadcast journalist, and she did a great job moderating the panel,” said Baylor journalism lecturer Kim Patterson, who helped organize the trips. “The scale and scope of who we were hearing from was amazing. We could not have had a better lineup of sports and entertainment experts.”
Starting a new tradition
The journalism department’s inaugural field trip was to Dallas in April 2025. There, Kennedy Dendy Reynolds, Baylor journalism graduate and social media marketing coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys, led the Baylor group on a tour of The Star in Frisco, the team’s home. The group also attended an FC Dallas soccer game and witnessed the postgame work required of Gina Miller, who at the time was the team’s vice president of broadcasting, communication and media. (She is now chief communications officer for the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association.)
“After the soccer game concluded, we went to the postgame press conference and (Miller) explained to us what her job entails,” said Evan Pomrenke, a Baylor senior journalism major. “She was writing a postgame report and was telling us, ‘Guys, right now. I’m doing this in real time and I have to have this done 20 minutes after the game is over.’”
Six months later, on a field trip to Austin in October 2025, students heard from several staffers at Texas Monthly. These included Robert Davila, the vice president of development and research at the magazine and a member of the journalism department’s Board of Advocates, who helped organize the Austin trip, Ross McCammon, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, and journalists Michael Hall and Katy Vine. Students also visited the Texas Tribune Festival and the Texas Tribune offices and talked with reporters there.
Support from alumni
The idea to initiate a biannual departmental field trip to benefit students originated with Chris Talley, a 1988 Baylor journalism graduate and president of the department’s Board of Advocates.
“The top priority of ours was, if we’re going to advocate, let’s get these students out in the field and on the ground and give them access to something they couldn't otherwise get and be a differentiator,” Talley said. “And for each market, we assigned a market lead and said –– what would it take to host students in our city for a day? We’ve curated three radically different experiences so far. San Antonio’s next, and I’m excited about that upcoming trip.”
One reason for his excitement is that Talley has spent the majority of his career in San Antonio, where he worked at USAA for 12 years and retired as senior vice president and chief communications officer in 2020. He is also the founder and chief communications officer of Talley Communication Strategies.
To make it easier for Baylor students to take part, they are not required to pay for any part of the field trip experience.
“Because of the enthusiasm and activity within the Board of Advocates in each market and support from the University, we’ve been able to fund these trips where 30 students and anywhere from five to seven chaperones can go on that experience at no cost to them,” Talley said.
University cooperation
For the first two trips, the cost of the charter bus was paid by the Baylor Career Center, “which is really a lovely thing,” Patterson said. “The buses are not inexpensive. Our Career Center liaison, Jalyn Monken, also showed us how to organize the trips, and has attended each one. She is a wonderful resource.”
The journalism department paid for the bus to Houston, while lunches, snacks and any required tickets, such as to the FC Dallas game and The Star, are also provided free to each group. Patterson said Dallas-based members of the Board of Advocates helped pay for the tickets, and some funds were provided by the Baylor Journalism Excellence Fund, which was established to help provide students with real-world, hands-on learning experiences.
“We have been doing some crowdfunding through Bear Funded, which is a site that’s run through Baylor University Advancement,” Patterson said. “And we’ve made several appeals to alumni, faculty, staff and the Board of Advocates to help fund our future trips.”
Talley said the board’s goal, using funds given by journalism alumni, is to continue offering students one field trip each fall and spring semester. After the San Antonio trip, which is tentatively scheduled for the Spring 2027 semester, he has his eyes set on providing out-of-state experiences for journalism students.
“We want to go beyond Texas,” Talley said, “to Nashville and Washington, D.C. There’s a different cost situation there, but we want to take it as far as possible.”
Benefits to students
Wherever future trips may take the students, Patterson said the benefits of such excursions are numerous.
“The trips put our students in professional settings so they can see how professionals conduct themselves,” she said, “and so they can hear from those professionals about what’s expected of the students if they’re going to be hired.”
The field trips also give students the self-assurance to say, “Okay, I know what this looks like now,” Patterson said.
“There’s an old saying about confidence: Act like you’ve been there before,” she said. “Well, for our students, they have been there before. We give them that opportunity to go there and see it. And it helps launch them into their first stage after Baylor with an extra arrow in their quiver so they’re a little bit more ready to go.”
For Grizzard, it’s encouraging as a new graduate to interact with the Baylor alumni who went before her and faced the same challenges trying to enter the job market.
“I felt more encouraged because these are people who were once in my shoes on the exact same campus, and now they have these amazing careers and they want to help us out too and help us grow,” she said.
“The trips put our students in professional settings so they can see how professionals conduct themselves.”
--Kim Patterson
The importance of follow-up
Grizzard, who served as assistant news editor of the Baylor Lariat in the spring of 2026, said she made a connection with Amber Tierce at Chevron that included email exchanges and a face-to-face meeting when Tierce was back visiting campus.
“That’s just a good relationship to have and to continue to foster if you’re looking to make connections,” Grizzard said. “And that’s what the bottom line is when you’re applying for jobs. It’s not enough to just be a face on a screen or have your name in a giant stack of résumés. You really have to know people, and these are the people you will know that can get you in.”
Patterson said that on the return bus rides to Waco, she will offer several suggestions to the students.
“I say, ‘Please write the people you just met an email thanking them, and please connect with them on LinkedIn,’” she said. “To help students do that, we give them the person’s name, title, email address and LinkedIn information.”
Patterson recommends that students send thank-you emails to three or four of the speakers they heard from on each trip, “those whose comments meant something to you.”
“I tell the students, take notes about something each person said. This is all part of being a journalist ––listening, observing and following up. Make sure to include something specific about what they said and why it meant something to you.”
Enhancing reputation
The journalism field trips not only expose Baylor students to real-life jobs and situations, but they also are an opportunity for the department to shine.
“This builds our reputation as a university and as a program,” Patterson said. “It helps elevate Baylor’s journalism reputation and lifts up our students as possible candidates for those jobs.”
Strong student response to the trips have inspired Patterson –– and other journalism faculty members who take part as chaperones –– to continue planning more outings.
“Yesterday after class, I had two students who were on the Houston trip just come up, and they were still on a high about how great it was and thanking us for doing it,” Patterson said. “And every time we think, ‘This is a lot of work and we’re tired,’ we go and receive positive responses and we know that we’ll do it again.”
(Opening photo courtesy of Stephen Green)
None of the original writing contained in this story was created with the use, in whole or in part, of artificial intelligence (AI).
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