About Me
I ended up studying journalism by accident. I never even meant to come to BYUI.
Being from Boise, my parents wanted me to come to Rexburg because it was closer to home, and one of my older brothers was a student here at the time.
I figured I would come for a semester or two before my mission to appease them, and then transfer when I got back. I chose a News Journalism emphasis in Communication almost at random and spent most of the two semesters before my mission taking generals.
After my mission I came for what I thought was my final semester at BYUI. I went to a journalism class (because it was on my Grad Plan), sat in the front row and listened as Brother Lane Williams talked about journalism as a calling, a search for truth, an art.
I fell in love with journalism and stayed at BYUI.
I’ve been involved in Scroll, the student newspaper, for the last three years. First as a practicum student doing print and video journalism, and now as Editor-in-Chief.
Through my connections at Scroll I was able to intern in the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., which led me to another internship at the House of Representatives for my Idaho Congressman Russ Fulcher.
Now, graduating with a News Journalism Communication degree and a Political Science minor, I plan to continue on to law school and one day work in government, politics or maybe be a novelist because, hey, I like to keep my options open.
About My Project
For my project I reached out to the Idaho Transportation Department and requested a disaggregated data set of every recorded car crash in Rexburg for the last ten years.
They sent me a truly massive Excel file with every crash in Rexburg from 2015 to 2024 entered into its own line and including information such as the ages of the people involved in the crash, the location, any contributing circumstances, the severeity of the crash, and so much more.
I analyzed the data set using Excel tools such as sorting, filtering and inserting pivot tables to answer questions I had about crashes in Rexburg.
My questions included things like; what demographic is most likely to be involved in crashes? Where do most crashes occur? What day of the week has the highest crash rate? What time of day?
As well as bigger picture questions like; are car crashes in Rexburg increasing or decreasing?
After identifying some key findings, I had to double-check my data against other factors– for example, although my numbers showed that crashes are increasing in Rexburg, so has the population. I used census data, combined with my crash data, to find the per capita crash rate.
I created my own charts using DataWrapper to illustrate the findings.
Then I reached out to members of the community to find people who have experience traffic and crashes here in Rexburg and conducted interviews with them.
I did some research on who would be more of an expert on all things roads and traffic here in Rexburg and reached out to Keith Davidson, the City of Rexburg Public Works Director, to interview him, as well.
“I took all the data from my research and interviews and synthesized it into a feature article titled ‘Crash course: Traffic concerns in a college town.’”
But wait, please hold your applause, we’re still not done.
I then formulted it into a certain type of online article experience called a scrollytell using Adobe Express, a new software I had never used before.
In addition to using my charts and photos from the crashes my interviewees’ crashes, I also shot some of my own photos using a Canon EOSR.
https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/static/embed/embed.jsI also formulated a two-page magazine “spread” of my article using Adobe InDesign.
Then, because InDesign was ticking me off, I used Canva to make this info graphic with some of my additional findings that I didn’t include in my article, and for display purposes at the Senior Project open house.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrap.