Bob Rowley is often introduced as “This is Bob Rowley, who spent a life in communication.” Bob Rowley is the Northwestern Assistant Vice President of Media Relations and a Medill School of Journalism lecturer. He spent 30 years working for the Chicago Tribune, was a White House correspondent, Pentagon correspondent, national correspondent based in Dallas, lived in Mexico covering Latin America, where his daughters were born, and in Toronto and Jerusalem, going back and forth covering a dozen wars and different kinds of stories. He has worked in higher education for about eight years, first at Elmhurst College and now Northwestern University. After graduating from the Northwestern MSC program at age 59 in 2013, he became the first president of the MSC Alumni Association.

At what point did you enter the program and why was this the right time for you?

After I came back from living abroad in 1998 and was working in Chicago, Elmhurst and Evanston for more than a dozen years, it was time for me to do something I always wanted to do: get a Master’s degree to learn and in order to be able to teach.

Communications, specifically, came up in a couple of ways. When I left the Chicago Tribune, I had a wife and family to support and two daughters in college. So, I needed to find something that wasn’t unstable like print journalism. I found my skills were valuable in other fields, such as higher education. My journalism skills were valuable in a field I used to believe was very different from journalism.

I came to Northwestern with a plan: to swim in a bigger pond working at a larger research university, to do things I hadn’t done yet in journalism, to get my masters, and to teach at Medill School of Journalism. I originally thought, “Am I too old to do this?” While younger people in my cohort  were quicker with technology I brought much more practical experience, and we were able to learn a lot from each other that way. I learned as much from my cohort, in some ways, as I did from my professors.

Why was Northwestern MSC the right program for you?

Out of all the programs I looked at, the MSC degree stood out, because it had so many interesting courses. I shopped around for programs, but I realized everything I was looking at had something to do with communication. The MSC program was a way to look at the best that was known and thought in the world about communication.

In the 33 years I was working in print journalism, technology changed everything.

It’s common to learn about communication only from the little perch of one’s career, but my professors looked at it in an academic context and most importantly, a global context, and kept up with the changing world. I was so enamored with this degree, my cohort, and professors, that I was so excited to go back to school at age 58. The program made me a better teacher now at Medill.

What is something you’ve learned that has made an impact on your professional and/or personal life?

I took a course about managing information for innovation, which became extremely valuable to the work I do. Our final project was to apply this to somewhere in our lives. An MSC colleague and I interviewed everyone at my Northwestern office and did a report on how to bring more innovation to the office and make people completely open to new ideas. We learned how to best nurture new ideas, be more creative, and encourage our employees. I applied some things we learned in class into our report on how we do things in this office. I found now that I’m a better manager because of this class and others. Instead of being closed to new ideas, I’ve learned to say “yes, and?,” not simply “no.” I also observed how my professors taught, to learn effective teaching strategies for current Medill classes I teach.

What was your favorite aspect of MSC at Northwestern?

It made me understand the big picture of communications, the business world, and my own profession and job here at the Northwestern. They teach you the best that is known and thought in the world, the latest cutting edge technology, why communication is important, how to communicate well, the best practices, how to think strategically, and how to lead. It’s not just communicating one on one, but it’s also how to gather all those ideas and knowledge you take in, keep them in mind, and think about what message you want to take out there on the road.

What advice would you have for anyone considering the MSC program?

If you’re interested in communication, leadership and strategic thinking, and want to understand a very complex media world that is changing every nanosecond and how to navigate in that world, this is the program for you. If you’re strictly interested in business school, this is not the program for you. The difference between the MSC and an MBA is that the MSC is more broad and will teach you those necessary skills about leadership, but also more broadly about the communication landscape in 21st century. You can get bits of many other programs through the MSC, but it’s much more than that.

We are in an age where communication is all the more important. We live in an era of fake news and alternative facts, which makes it even more important to understand the tools of communication and how to use them effectively to cut through all of the noise and get your strategy and message out there. It’s a great program for that — thinking and navigating in a complex communication world.

Can you talk about the value of the MSC network and whether you’ve been able to keep in touch?

The class of 2013 was a very tight cohort, and the idea for an alumni association came about after we graduated. We wanted to create an alumni association to create the same cooperative, collaborative affinity as we had with our cohort. In March 2015, I became the first president of MSC Alumni Association, and now am co-chair of mentoring panel for the MSC Alumni Association. I have had a number of meetings with current students or fellow alumni who are interested in getting involved in networking for future career purposes.

We host a lot of events. We just had MSC Professor Jason DeSanto speak to us in an extraordinary two hour lecture. No one wanted to take a lunch break, but instead we all wanted to keep asking questions. That’s just one example of how much the program energized me and the different cohorts, to the point that some of us would’ve gone into a PhD program if they offered one.

I stay in touch with three quarters of all the 84 people in my cohort. Every year I hold a tailgate party for our 2013 alumni. The MSC Alumni Association has made staying in touch both among cohorts and across cohorts much more doable. We often have an event in which alumni are invited to be panelists and to network with current students, which helps connect the different generations.

Sonny is the CEO of design communications agency SONNY+ASH in Chicago, which he co-founded in 2011 in the middle of his time in the MSC program. The company helps people communicate their ideas to the masses. His undergraduate background was also in Communication Studies at Northwestern.

Why was MSC the right program for you?

Think of a young kid who was pretty much an introvert, who wouldn’t speak in class, but at home was a chatterbox to the point that my mom would have to give me a dollar to shut up. That was me. I had to go into communication because there were two things I loved: 1) talking and 2) observing. Communication was who I was and my nature. Prior to communication I was an engineering major. I had all the grades and did what I needed, but it didn’t feel like I would get up in the morning and really like what I was going to do. After undergrad I was working in engineering and sales and it was more technical than it is sales, so I wasn’t really doing communication at my job. After about 5 years I was bored, so I went into the MSC program. It felt like a good fit for me and after studying communication as an undergraduate at Northwestern, it felt like the right thing to do.

I went into a communication graduate degree instead of business for a couple reasons. Firstly, it felt like home to me. Secondly, I didn’t see benefit of the financials part of a business degree. Thirdly, there’s enough black and white decisions in life and I wanted that insight into grey zone situations, and the soft skills to take my company to the next level.

As an entrepreneur, do you think that the program had a significant and unique value for entrepreneurs?

I think every entrepreneur should go through this, especially for small business owners. This is your gamut of classes you should take in life to run a business effectively. If I would put it in numerics, I would say it will help you learn how to best manage employee retention, the ability to see and mitigate risk through communication, the management of crises that may happen throughout your organization, and the effective introduction of products and services. All of these topics are part of any entrepreneur’s struggles, and often a typical small business owner can’t afford to always hire consultants. So, to all the entrepreneurs out there, why not spend the money and have that knowledge base for yourself. That’s something people can’t take away from you and I think that becomes an amazing part of your core to run any business.

What is something you’ve learned that has made an impact on your professional and/or personal life?

This program gives you a direct application of theories. It’s had a significant impact on way I see the world. For instance, the way I relate to people. I saw the biggest benefit in my soft skills, because I chose classes that weren’t coupled with my nature, but very challenging for me as an individual and my values.

Kathleen Galvin’s Diversity and Inclusion class is one that challenged my values. When I first started, if you asked me about my opinion about diversity and inclusiveness, I would have given you a whole spiel on how the “strongest survive” and there is no need for it, but my perspective definitely changed. When you are an executive of a company that is growing very fast, you have to start thinking about the other side of the coin. I was even eventually asked to speak about diversity and inclusiveness on a panel. I took this class, leading me to make decisions at work, leading to me to become a thought leader in the topic.

How have you grown from the program?

I had a model of the world – a very big financial model of the world about running a business. It was all about profits. The process of going through the MSC taught me that wasn’t the only model that worked, and that there’s more to profits than the dollar and cents of it and that other attributes have to be juggled and pieced together, because they all lead to the same kind of numbers.

What was your favorite aspect of MSC at Northwestern?

I really enjoyed the cohort. I got to meet a lot of interesting people and formed close relationships with them. I still have a few of them as friends and we connect from time to time. I have enlisted some of them as consultants in my company. One helped me interview potential candidates, one was a technologist who helped me create a server infrastructure. Everyone in each cohort has a different career and their own path. Very diverse interests are represented, and it’s great when you’re stuck with a question because there is always someone there who can answer it.

What advice would you have for anyone considering the MSC program?

It’s not really about a particular business path. It’s more about soft skills than it is about the career path. It’s the track of what all leaders should go through in all organizations. You’re going to use this stuff whether you like it or not. As a leader, the more tools you have, the better you can run an organization. The program gives you not just one tool, but a whole toolbox.

Jeanne was most recently a host of a television morning news talk show in Chicago for nearly 8 years and has had a 30-year career in radio and television. Her passion for media began in high school and continued at WNUR radio during her undergraduate degree at Northwestern. Jeanne believes in the importance of integrating experiential learning and academics in order to be able to truly organize and fully learn from our experiences.

At what point in your career did you enter the MSC program?

My undergraduate degree was from Northwestern and it was in psychology. I wanted to take a little break before graduate school, and instead I ended up having an entire career in the media. I had been working on “You & Me” for 4 or 5 years when I first entered MSC. However, I always had a life goal of going back to graduate school because I love school and love learning. The problem was that most of my learning between my undergraduate degree and the MSC was on the job– it was valuable but it was more like enrichment because it wasn’t academically rigorous.

So why was this the right time for you?

As my career changed, I changed too and I learned different things. Eventually, I realized that I wasn’t going to remain in broadcasting forever. The industry has changed a lot in the years that I’ve been in it and I realized I need to prepare myself for the next thing. I thought, maybe going back to school will help me codify and organize what I know. Sometimes what you’ve learned in life doesn’t have a place because it hasn’t been organized in the way that learning in an academic environment helps you to do. The coursework helped me to understand another layer of how to truly learn from my experience in broadcast, and that was what I wanted.

I enjoyed going back to school, and going back to Northwestern was very important for me too. I’m glad I waited until later in life (20+ years after undergrad) to go back to school. I was able to appreciate my Northwestern experience a lot more. I also brought a lot of my own experiences to the program and put it in perspective.

Why was MSC the right program for you?

I did a lot of research on different programs and already had an idea of what I wanted to do after broadcast. Eventually I decided that a graduate degree in communication was right for me. I wanted something a little different and broader in scope than what my career has been and covered all the different ways we communicate across the board.

In the end, the MSC turned out to be perfect for me not only because of the courses, but also because of the other people in my cohort. When you’re on air, your workflow and interactions with others happen very differently than in other businesses and industries. Through my classmates, I was able to learn about interactions in different industries.

What is something you’ve learned that has made an impact on your professional life?

Michael Roloff’s Change Management class was one of the first classes I took. To begin with, I love him and his style of teaching.

In an industry that constantly shifts according to people’s tastes, changes in technology, and new modes of media, my entire career has been about change. Thanks to this class I was able to analyze all of those different changes I had been through, and put them into context in order to understand how to manage them better. A lot of people have preconceived notions on how you implement change, not realizing there might be a better way to do it.

Any interesting or unique projects you worked on during your time in the program?

I really enjoyed my project in Professor Roloff’s class, because I was able to make it more personal. It was about analyzing a change management scenario. I chose changes that a coworker and I wanted to implement. It had to do with some workflow challenges for our team and the changes didn’t quite work the first time we tried. We used the material from the class to understand the different factors involved and how to adjust to them. I even followed up with him later about what worked and what didn’t. Every class that I’ve taken has applied to what I’ve already experienced or something that I’ve lived with in my industry and career, and I’m positive many students in my cohort felt the same way.

What advice would you have for anyone considering the Northwestern MSC program?

If you think the program might be right for you, it probably is. No matter where you are on the spectrum of experience, there is something in the program for you if you are interested in communication and becoming a better communicator. There is always room to get better and get to the next level. The program is so valuable because in everything we do, we are always communicating, negotiating and needing other people to understand us to accomplish goals.