BY CLARA MELO DE PAULA
Every fall semester journalism students join UCF’s Magazine Production and Editing course to create a magazine for students, by students. Professor Rick Brunson was the Centric adviser and associate instructor from 2011 to 2020. He created the class dedicated to publishing Centric magazine in 2011 with the help of Robert Chandler, the former Nicholson School of Communication and media director . Brunson recalled the moment the idea was first proposed. “There’s always been an interest among our students in magazines as a medium. The course itself had been on the books in the curriculum for the journalism program for a very long time, at least back into the ‘90s.” “But around 2010, the Nicholson School Director at the time, Dr. Robert Chandler, invited me one day to go to a luncheon with him. On our way to the luncheon, he looked at me and said ‘Rick, why can’t we have a magazine? Like our own magazine in the Nicholson School?’
“And I said ‘Well, Dr. Chandler, there is no reason we can’t. Are you willing to pay for it?’ Because it takes money to print a magazine. He said we can front the money. And we had a class, but the class at the time was like an industry survey class. Dr. Chandler’s idea, however, was to make a magazine, so the class went from taking a big survey of the magazine industry to a production class. So in 2011, we launched the class and that’s what it became — we produced a magazine.” Former managing editors and an editorin-chief recall what Centric taught them, whether they continued with journalism or chose another path.
PHOTO BY CLARA MELO DE PAULA; OPPOSITE: (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) COURTESY OF CENTRIC MAGAZINE, COURTESY OF RACHEL WILLIAMS, COURTESY OF ADAM RHODES, COURTESY OF KELLI ORDONIA, COURTESY OF RACHEL STUART, COURTESY OF DANIELLA MEDINA, COURTESY OF ALLISON MIEHL
Legacy of Centric
