"After the first semester, I knew this was the perfect fit for me."

- Paola Canales, UMUC Alumna
Communication Studies
School of Undergraduate Studies

MyUMUC Story:

Paola Canales Loves Getting the Word Out

By Jackie Zakrewsky

When it was time to transfer to a four-year school, Paola Canales didn’t have far to look. Her older brother, Omar, had just finished his degree at UMUC and encouraged her to follow suit. “Why not?” she thought and enrolled.

“After the first semester, I knew this was the perfect fit for me,” says Canales, a communication studies major who spent two years at Montgomery College. “I needed to attend a school that would fit my full-time work schedule and at the same time would prepare me for the field I was trying to pursue.”

That preparation came both inside and outside the classroom. Through two Cooperative Education (Co-op) internships, she earned 12 credits toward her degree.

In spring 2006, through a program of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, she landed a summer internship with the director of Hispanic Communication and Outreach in the U.S. Department of Education. That experience led to her second Co-op position as a media relations executive for a communications company specializing in educational radio programming nationwide. “I am really getting to know the PR/media industry from the inside,” she says.

Well before graduation in May 2007, she was already looking forward to pursuing a master’s degree in media studies.