Journalism has provided Zoe Hoffard with knowledge and insights that she is using outside of the reporting field. As an incoming graduate student at Yale Divinity School, the senior journalism and religion double major believes the curriculum at Klein College of Media and Communication helped supplement her religious studies and bolster her skill set for an academic career in religious studies. 

Hoffard’s studies are focused on Abrahamic religions, particularly Judaism. She began seriously studying religion after taking a race and Judaism class during her freshman year at Temple University. Much like the stories and impact of journalism, religious accounts and their political, social and economic implications piqued her interest. Hoffard became invested in learning more about how religion affects the world while journalism shines a light on those effects while receiving encouragement from Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez, the undergraduate program director for the Department of Religion and one of her former professors, 

 “All of the techniques in my toolbox that I’ve learned from journalism — you know, how to do good research, how to make sure that everything you’re writing is accounted for from sources and how to talk with people, how to interact with people that you have nothing in common with — is all stuff that I’m bringing into my studies of religion,” Hoffard says.

Lori Tharps, an associate professor in the Department of Journalism, was Hoffard’s instructor in a class entitled Ripped from the Headlines, in which students use journalism methods to create fictional stories based on real news events. Tharps, who also had a strong interest in journalism and religion as a college student, noticed Hoffard’s enthusiasm for religion early on because she used religious events as the main focus of her stories for the class. While Tharps normally upholds a rule of only writing letters of recommendation for students who have taken more than one of her classes, she was thrilled when Hoffard asked her to be one of the references for her Yale Divinity School application.

“[Hoffard’s] like that student who you just want to win,” Tharps says. “She was that student who put the effort in, who knew what she wanted but didn’t have an attitude that she was too good to do anything or wouldn’t try. So, you know, when you get a student like that, you want to support them in their endeavors because you can tell that they have the kind of attitude that given the right opportunity they’re going to take advantage. And Zoe just exemplifies that for me.”

While Alvarez has not seen any of Hoffard’s journalism work like her content for Philadelphia Neighborhoods or her copy editing director role for the student publication Hyphen Literary and Art Magazine, she recognizes that Hoffard is committed to thinking deeply about the ways journalism and religion intersect. So Alvarez also recommended Hoffard for admission to Yale Divinity School. 

“Along with economics and global politics, global religion plays a huge role in how things are unfolding in our world and we need smart, critical thinkers to start engaging these problems more and more,” Alvarez says. “Zoe was in my Religion and Society class this fall and she was very, very pragmatic, insightful and generous in her thinking about groups, their underlying beliefs and how they shaped the social world around them. So she struck me as an excellent candidate to move forward to do graduate-level work on these topics.”

Hoffard will begin her studies at Yale Divinity School in the fall. After obtaining her graduate degree, she plans to pursue her doctorate in religious studies and teach at a university. Although she is not religious, she hopes to offer a “holistic,” balanced education to her future students, much like her Temple professors did for her.