Leadership lived: Future TV news reporter gets experience at UIS

Beatrice Bonner loves to talk and inform people. Ever since working at a radio station in high school, she’s wanted to become a TV news reporter.

Bonner is a junior communication major and a member of the Capital Scholars Honors Program at the University of Illinois Springfield. This semester, she’s taking a visual storytelling class where she’s learning what it takes to put together a story.

“We come up with story ideas. It’s like being in a newsroom,” she said. “We get to pitch them to our classroom and then we go out and shoot, we interview people and then we come back into the lab and we edit.”

Bonner says she wants to be a journalist because she enjoys keeping people informed about important issues happening in their community.

“I just like being able to get information out and help people because if we didn’t have TV news or reporting, people would know nothing,” she said.

Outside of the classroom, Bonner is the vice president and a founding member of the Alpha Phi Chapter of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. She also serves as membership intake coordinator.

“That means that I helped encourage these ladies to join,” she said. “I do interviews, I teach them information that they needed in order to be part of the sorority. I’m kind of like their mom.”

Bonner says she feels well prepared for her future thanks to her UIS education.

“UIS has taught me in order to be a leader you have to go and get it,” she said. “Nobody is going to sit and baby you. You have to work for it.”