By Robert Tassy III and Luís Melgar –

A group of undergraduate and graduate students from the School of Communication spent election night at Univisión, the Spanish language broadcast TV network. They designed information graphics for the company’s special mid-term election blog, POL16.

From candidate elections to state amendments and initiatives, students under the guidance of professor Alberto Cairo played the role of a data and infographics team, translating and delivering election results that trickled in throughout the evening into concise, simple infographics. Univisión has collected most of the graphics that students designed in this dedicated website. Professor Cairo has also written about the experience in his personal website.

The collaboration is part of an agreement between the School of Communication at the University of Miami and Univision Communications, Inc (UCI). As part of this agreement, professor Cairo and different groups of students will visit Univisión and Fusion five times every semester, and will collaborate with their digital units on large multimedia and infographics projects.

Isaac Lee, president of news for UCI and CEO of Fusion, greeted the partnership: “We are excited to collaborate with Professor Alberto Cairo, his students and the University of Miami’s School of Communication through this partnership [and] truly unique opportunity centered on one of the most important and widely used digital journalism tools today.”

The University of Miami School of Communication students that covered election night for Univisión are Yiran Zhu, Luke Pukatch, Luis Melgar, Hong Ying, Lyssa Goldberg, Jiaxin Liu, Jiachuan Wu, Karli Evans, Ashley Martinez, Halina Mader, and Robert Tassy.  While at Univisión’s headquarters, students had the chance to meet and interact with the digital newsroom staff and enjoy a late-lunch staff break with them. In addition to working in a fast-paced news environment, students left with a glimpse of the newsroom atmosphere.