The Elliott School of Communication’s annual Comm Week is changing its direction this year.

Comm Week starts today and runs through tomorrow. Elliott School director Matt Cecil said Comm Week gives communication students the opportunity to meet with and interact with communication professionals.

“We want as many professionals as possible to spend time with our students and this is a good opportunity to sort of formalize this process,” Cecil said.

Past Comm Weeks consisted of small panel discussions held throughout Elliott Hall over two days that students attended instead of classes. This year, classes will be held and professionals will come to classes to speak about the professional world. Part of that change, Cecil said, came from the low attendance at the panel discussions.

“We figured we know where the students are during a certain time of day, so we decided to bring the professionals into the classroom,” Cecil said. “Almost all of our classes will have a professional in class.”

The highlight event of Comm Week 2013 is a large panel discussion Thursday with men’s basketball coach Gregg Marshall and some media professionals involved in coverage of the Final Four, including WSU alumnus and former Sunflower Editor-in-Chief Austin Colbert. Cecil said it was thanks to Lisa Parcell, assistant professor and director of graduate studies in Elliott, that Marshall would participate in Comm Week.

“I went over to athletics and they were completely supportive,” Cecil said. “We appreciate Coach Marshall taking the time, because there’s a basketball season coming up.”

Marshall and the other panelists speak at 9:30 a.m. in the Campus Activities Center Theater. Cecil said the event is open to anybody, not just communication students.

“I think it’ll be an enlightening discussion,” Cecil said.

Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers will provide free custard to students in the Elliott School commons afterward.

Cecil said the 20 guest professionals include television journalists, Integrated Marketing Communication professionals and more.

Communication students can go to a different class to attend sessions with professionals, provided they clear it with the professor teaching the class, Cecil said.

“It’s probably more difficult for a student to go see someone in a different class than it would to have a panel discussion,” Cecil said. “But I think ultimately there will be more contact between professionals and students because of this.”

Cecil said that ultimately, this new method of Comm Week is an experiment.

“We’ll see how it goes,” he said. “Of course, we can rethink this anytime we want to. We will, after the fact, see how it went and what we want to do next time. If we decide we need to change, we’ll absolutely involve students in that discussion.”