Two graduate students at the Olivet School of Media and Communication (OSMC) are conducting research on news topics in order to prepare for their journalism capstone project in the Fall quarter.

Journalism Capstone is the very last course that graduate journalism students would take before graduation. Through this Master's project, students must demonstrate a mastery of journalism knowledge and skills that they have undertaken from previous courses. The final product of the journalism capstone should be a series of ready-to-publish articles with at least 5,000 words, based on extensive reporting, research and interviews.

Sarah Murugan, a student at Olivet University's Washington D.C. campus, has proposed to do a series on cultural issues revolving around churches and Christians in India. Christians in India are religious minorities often facing persecution due to the anti-conversion law and extreme Hindu groups.

Though persecution is an important issue in Indian churches, there are also other topics that are newsworthy yet less-covered by the media. For example, how born-again Christians in India can cope with their culture that is deeply rooted in Hinduism, the impact of Pentecostal movement on churches in India, how to outreach to numerous indigenous people groups in this multilingual and multicultural country. Murugan will focus on one of these topics.

Olivet University Riverside campus student Kristina Ran will be working on topics related to Chinese churches. In light of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong which has occupied the top headlines in the international media, Ran would like to examine how this issue may affect the Chinese churches and Christians both in mainland China and abroad.

Both students are looking forward to challenging themselves intellectually, academically and professionally through this capstone project.