PUC Hosts 10 Academies for the 34th Annual Publication Workshop

For the 34th year, Pacific Union College welcomed back academies around California for Publication Workshop from September 8-10. About 110 participants from Lodi, Mesa Grande, Mountain View, Pine Hills, Pleasant Hill, PUC Prep, Redlands, San Fernando, Tualatin Valley, and Ukiah focused on improving their high schools’ publications through workshops focusing on design, video production, photography, and writing.

PUC Visual Arts Professor Tim de La Torre directed Publication Workshop for the third year. Alongside him presenting workshops were his visual arts colleagues Professor Brian Kyle, Nephtali Marin, and Cliff Rusch, and PUC Communication Professors Eric Graham and Tara Hargrove. Maranatha Volunteers International Vice President of Marketing Julie Z. Lee, a PUC alum, was this year’s keynote speaker. Amy Hill, yearbook advisor for Redlands Adventist Academy, also led workshop sessions for advisors and PUC Theology Professor James Wibberding leading opening worship.

Participants started the first workshop with a two-hour breakout session for each subject and spent the afternoon with their teams working on two assignments that needed to be completed before 10pm. This activity taught students to develop cohesion and work under pressure as they created projects together. De La Torre hopes academies return home with the belief in the power of their team and recognition that they can do great things when working together.

Once their projects were completed and critiqued, the teams spent an hour making changes based on the feedback received. Kyle’s favorite part of Publication Workshop is seeing the improvements come to life with a short amount of time.

“I hope each participant feels more empowered to perform their roles for their school’s publication,” he said. “I also hope that each school feels like they understand their team better and have started to identify strategies to work better together as a team and begin to understand the power of accepting critique and seeing their work improve as they allow themselves to understand how their work might be perceived from a different perspective.”