{"id":15924,"date":"2026-07-01T10:35:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T14:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/?p=15924"},"modified":"2026-07-01T10:35:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T14:35:05","slug":"caroline-mccullough-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/news\/2026\/07\/01\/caroline-mccullough-27\/","title":{"rendered":"Caroline McCullough \u201927"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Passionate about storytelling and exploring her many academic interests, Caroline McCullough majors in journalism<\/a> and anthropology<\/a> with minors in film\/media<\/a> and sustainable agriculture and food systems<\/a>. She is a dedicated volunteer at Rhody Outpost, the College of Arts and Sciences fellow, winner of the Writing Across URI Competition and a student reporter for URI\u2019s Community News Lab<\/a>. McCullough approaches her college experience with high energy, curiosity, and an open mind to learn all that she can. McCullough remains grateful for the wide range of opportunities URI has given her to fulfill her needs both academically and personally. She says she \u201cdoes not feel like a small fish in a big pond,\u201d despite being on a big campus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What made you choose URI?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I chose URI for a couple of different reasons. I looked at a couple of liberal arts colleges, and at the time I was interested in going into the film program and working in media. I found that a lot of the smaller liberal arts colleges didn’t have media programs that were as big as URI’s or had as many internship opportunities. I went to URI because I found a way to bring all my areas of interest together, which allowed me to study and explore different areas of education.URI allowed me to explore as much as I wanted to. Because URI is a public university, I got to meet people from all walks of life and take advantage of so many different opportunities during my time here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What made you choose your majors?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I came to URI to major in film\/media because I was interested in media. I thought I maybe wanted to go into working on documentaries or creative filmmaking. I was very interested in storytelling. I\u2019ve always been very creative, and I love to write creatively as well, so the film major really allowed me to explore all the different areas in film. I could do some screenwriting work, I could try directing if I wanted to, I could do sound design, I could do cinematography, I could do costume and production design – there are just so many different opportunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

URI gives me so many opportunities to explore, so I\u2019ve jumped around majors a couple of times. As I\u2019ve grown and changed as a person, I’ve sort of shifted where I thought I wanted to go long-term. I was in film, then in sustainable agriculture and food systems, thinking I might want to do something in food policy and justice. Now, I\u2019m in anthropology because I\u2019m really interested in human beings in general and understanding the context that goes behind each human being. And how humans came to be where they are today, which is a lot of what anthropology is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doing anthropology and the film major together allows me to have the tools to understand people and have the media experience to give me opportunities to tell people’s stories in a digital way. It allows me to have the tools to tell people’s stories in an effective and professional way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How are you involved on campus? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have found through my majors and involvement in activities that I have been able to connect with people in a bunch of different ways. In terms of classes, I\u2019d say especially for the anthropology major, it\u2019s quite a small major, but that means you really get to know the people that you’re with. And in the film program, there is so much work that involves working with other people in the program outside of the classroom that you really get to know each other and you become friends and in some ways, colleagues because you\u2019re working on sets that are essentially professional. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say my biggest area of involvement is the Rhody Outpost<\/a>. I\u2019m the student volunteer manager there, and I’ve been there for over two years now. It\u2019s just an amazing part of the URI community that wants to help people. It wants to create a welcoming place for all students and faculty, whether they want to come or need to come. I really enjoy working there and I\u2019ve created some amazing relationships with people that are different ages than me or have had completely different lives than me, and getting to hear about their lives – especially if they\u2019re international students – getting to hear about their home country and what they think of Rhode Island and what\u2019s it like to them since I\u2019m from here, and getting to share experiences is really special and meaningful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Community News Lab has allowed me to create professional connections and get a taste of what journalism \u201cin the real world\u201d is like, which I\u2019ve really enjoyed. I\u2019ve gotten to explore several different areas of interest in my professional writing, which has been an amazing opportunity. It\u2019s allowed me to connect my knowledge of sustainable agriculture with my love of writing and my desire to improve my professional writing skills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was an Arts and Sciences student fellow the summer between my freshman and sophomore year. I worked with film\/media professor Keith Brown to organize and edit footage for him. I also worked and created a short documentary for the Rhody Outpost that summer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was a coastal and environmental fellow<\/a> the summer between my sophomore and junior year, and that involved me working with sustainable agriculture professor John Taylor<\/a>, and we worked on the \u201cUrban Food Waste project.\u201d It was working with members of different communities in urban areas of Rhode Island who were immigrants and\/or people of color and had home gardens and practiced subsistence gardening in their own backyards. We were interviewing them, measuring their gardens, and collecting data on why they were gardening, what they were gardening, if they were immigrants, what they were gardening from their home countries, and if they were, why they were gardening, and how big the space was. The ultimate goal of the project is to understand how many immigrants and people of color in urban areas of Rhode Island have home gardens and find ways to create resources that are more accessible for them for food security and home gardening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is your dream job after you graduate?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I would really love to work for a company that works with food or a nonprofit that\u2019s related to food security in writing and informational services. When I came into school, I said I wanted to work on food shows or food documentaries, which I would still love to do theoretically – not on the film crew side but more on the producing\/writing and research side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would also want to do it if it was doing something for the greater good. It\u2019s very important to me and my future that I do a job that helps people who need it, and that I walk away from it every day feeling like I have helped to make a positive change in a community or in the world. I want to go out, I want to work with people, I want to talk to people, I want to learn about their stories, so I would say working in informational media, specifically related to food or food security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is your favorite memory from your time at URI?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Probably working on my documentary for the Rhody Outpost because that was something I came up with. That was sort of the beginning of dipping my toe into the Rhody Outpost and food security world. I realized while working on that documentary that I wanted to do something like that in my career and my life. It started the ball rolling for me in terms of being interested in food security and justice and being interested in spending time with communities and working with people and talking to people about their own experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was a really big turning point for me at URI because before that, I was in film and I was enjoying it, but I wasn’t really sure what exactly I was doing. Working on that documentary about the Rhody Outpost flipped a switch for me. It made me realize that I want to work somewhere where I’m helping people. That helped lead me to want to do stuff related to food security, sustainable agriculture and food justice. It helped me realize that I wanted to talk about people, learn about them, and understand how people got to where they were. That ultimately led me to anthropology as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do also love the memory of finishing the seaweed paper that I wrote for an anthropology and marine affairs professor, Carlos Garcia-Quijano<\/a>. I wrote it for \u201cPeoples of the Sea<\/a>,\u201d and he was so supportive and found it so interesting. I brought him a bag of Irish seaweed for him to try, and he said he was going to tell all of his friends about its history and how it’s a superfood. He was really encouraging, and at that time, I felt really supported in my area of interest. That was my favorite anthropology memory because it made me feel that this was where I wanted to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story was written by Emily Morgan, intern for the Harrington School<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Journalism and Anthropology<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3771,"featured_media":15925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[96,98,12,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-media","category-journalism","category-news","category-student-profile"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3771"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15924"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15927,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15924\/revisions\/15927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/harrington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}