As a group of Southern Methodist University communications students looked at the vast amount of water in Grand Isle, La., they learned that 20 years ago, it had been land. Wetland experts told the group that it was not the spill that they were most concerned about, but the vanishing coastline and the way the oil spill contributes to it.

Grand Isle, La. was just one of the stops Professor Nina Flournoy and a group of J-Term students went to while traversing the gulf coast, exploring the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

“The impact of that for students, particularly communicators, is why don’t we know about this? We were mad,” Flournoy said. “The challenge to communicators is how do we make people listen? How do we make people care?”

In this environmental communications class, students spent J-Term discovering the effects of the spill while learning how to effectively communicate these types of issues to the public.

“All media coverage has muddled the impact news has on people,” Flournoy said. “We need to understand that as communicators, we need to cut through the noise of all the different forms of media.”

The trip was packed with speakers, including nonprofit organizations, seafood distributors, wetlands experts, community members and others.

“The trip gave me the opportunity to not only learn that information, but to learn from each group’s different reaction [of] how to communicate effectively,” sophomore corporate communications and public affairs (CCPA) major Esther Liu said.

“The part that stuck out the most to me was the fact that it seemed very difficult to find the truth,” junior CCPA major Stevie Rae Farrell said. “There were so many opinions that would contradict each other., but our class worked to try and find a middle ground.”

The group also had the chance to speak with a group of New Orleans socialites, Women of the Storm. The group rallied after Hurricane Katrina to try and let the world know what was happening in New Orleans from their perspective.

“This experience has opened my eyes to an issue that I really didn’t know much about and has given me the inspiration to be a more involved citizen – to pay more attention to what is going on around me and try to make a difference if I can,” Farrell said.

For a more detailed look at SMU Students, visit the course blog,Gone to the Gulf, at http://ninaflournoy.wordpress.com.