As Jamir Bowers (’24) prepares for Commencement, he’s looking back on his experience at Michigan State University with pride.
“If I had to describe it in one word, I would have to say prosperous,” Bowers said.
Bowers will graduate April 26 with a Bachelor of Arts in Digital Storytelling. As a first-year student, Bowers knew he wanted to pursue the arts, and specifically filmmaking. He didn’t immediately start his classes at ComArtSci. Instead, Bowers enrolled in the Residential College of Arts and Humanities.
“It was a really great experience having that major my first year because I got to take a lot of liberal arts courses and get a feel for my writing style,” Bowers said. “I wanted to study how to make films. Luckily, when my freshman year was over, I found out about this new major coming to ComArtSci, which was Digital Storytelling. I was like, wow…I really like the different pathways that I could take.”
Bowers worked diligently to maintain a cumulative 4.0 grade point average. His hard work paid off when a unique opportunity came along. Bowers took part in a semester-long internship with Warner Brothers Discovery, Inc. The experience gave him a prime behind-the-scenes view of how films are marketed.
“It was a really great experience,” Bowers said. “It was more into the PR world, which is something that I didn't have too much experience with before. It was a very fast-paced internship, working directly with some executives at Warner Brothers Discovery, Inc. I was assigned to work on a film called ‘Kimi’ starring Zoe Kravitz. Then, the 2022 film ‘The Batman’ came out and that was a really big thing.”
That “big thing” was Bowers’ role as the first student in MSU history to collaborate with a major film company to deliver an early on-campus movie screening. Bowers hosted “The Batman” for hundreds of students before the film’s official release in theaters. That internship experience helped him gain connections in the film industry.
Bowers also held an internship with WKAR, and took advantage of study aboard opportunities in Kenya and Tanzania.
There were some difficult moments along his academic journey as well. Just before his junior year, Bowers’ grandmother passed away. He reflects on that time as “an emotional whirlwind.”
“It was quite a shock to me,” Bowers said. “This was someone who had such a hand in my life. You know, dealing with the aftereffects of having someone who passes away that’s so close to you can be a possible detriment to a person’s education. But after connecting with the resources that I had available to me, I think the inverse effect happened where it inspired me to push on and work harder.”
Jamir Bowers is setting his sights beyond graduation. He wants to focus his work on amplifying diverse and marginalized voices in film. Bowers sees himself as an instructor one day, as well as an entrepreneur. He’s already started his own business venture called Echobeam Media.
“I’m very excited to start working on my production company startup,” Bowers said. “I have a short film that I wrote, produced and directed this past spring. I’m in the editing stage now. So, right after graduation I will continue to work on that film and hopefully will have a release later this year.”
Bowers credits his late grandmother with instilling in him a love for film…and her memory inspires him to fulfill his dream.
“She loved the art of film,” Bowers said. “I think in her own right she was a film historian because she had decades (of movies) in her collection. I think her love of film rubbed off on me in some ways. I know that she would be happy to know that I’m continuing to pursue the field that we both were interested in.”