Teves with Dr. Forrest Aven (left), HEBSBA dean, and Craven (right) during spring commencement.
As someone who couldn’t dissect a frog in her high school biology class, Eileen Teves found another, less invasive way to achieve her goal of becoming a doctor. Teves recently became the first graduate of the H-E-B School of Business and Administration’s (HEBSBA) new Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.) program, which launched its first cohort in Fall 2013. The 60-hour program was recently recognized as one of the top 50 D.B.A. programs for 2016 by Top Management Degrees, an online guide to earning a degree in management or business.
Teves said she researched doctoral degrees in the area and UIW’s program spoke to her. She was confident that earning a D.B.A. would help her gain theoretical knowledge, build valuable researching skills, and the ability to apply them to real-world business.
“The program opened my eyes to the business world,” said Teves, an Emmy Award-winning journalist who has worked in television for 20 years, 12 as a KENS5 Great Day SA co-host. “It pushed me to be a more critical thinker. I can look at a story and see it on an economic level. Everything is run by business, and I can see things that way.”
Teves, a native of San Francisco Bay, earned a B.A. in rhetoric and communications from the University of California at Davis and a M.B.A. from Our Lady of the Lake University.
She particularly enjoyed the D.B.A. program because it’s practitioner-oriented, rather than solely focused on research. As an established journalist, Teves wanted to be able to put what she learned into practice.
One of her favorite parts of the program was the study abroad trip, which she enjoyed so much that she went twice. Teves traveled to Paris and Strasbourg, France, and Heidelberg and Frankfurt, Germany, to learn first-hand about global communications and the similarities and differences of how news is handled around the world.
Teves with Dr. Trey Guinn, assistant professor of communications, who served on her dissertation committee.
To delve into the changing industry, Teves focused her dissertation on the ways in which the delivery of news is shifting, with a higher focus on digital and social media, rather than on television and newspapers. For her research, she interviewed 10 photojournalists and television journalists to ask about the integration of social media into the news world and how it has affected their workload.
“There has definitely been a shift in how consumers consume news,” Teves said. “People just have to reach for their phone, and there’s news. It isn’t just TV anymore. It’s multimedia. That’s disheartening because I work in TV. More people are cutting the cord. I didn’t realize there were a lot of people doing that.”
Dr. Annette Craven, the director of the D.B.A. program and chair of Teves’ dissertation committee, said the research contributes cutting-edge knowledge to the journalism industry.
“During her career, she saw the shifting tides away from teams (journalist, photo/video journalist, editor) investigating and reporting credible news from legitimate sources to the age of the citizen journalist, where a smart phone video submitted from someone on the street could be headline news,” Craven said. “Now, instead of a team, one person is expected to video, edit and report the news.”
In her dissertation, Teves highlighted the potential problems with such changes, including the reliance on a single multimedia journalist to ensure credibility and quality, which she says is difficult if not impossible. The liability of such a drastically downsized staff, Teves found, could spell the demise of news stations.
“It’s an evolving industry, and I would like to witness that,” she said. “There are still so many great stories to tell.”
Teves defends her dissertation.
As for her future, Teves says she would like to someday become a consultant or university professor. For now however, she recently accepted a position with InGenesis, Inc. as director of corporate communications. The company’s owner and CEO is fellow Cardinal and UIW board of trustees member Veronica Edwards.
“I would like to eventually become a university professor because I enjoy motivating students, sharing what I’ve learned, seeing positive results, and giving back to the community,” Teves said. “I had great professors and I hope to someday share my academic and real-world experience with students in either the business or communications field.”
To learn more about the D.B.A. program, visit www.uiw.edu/dba/
By Ashley Festa
