Meg Moritz observes students working in a Chinese production facility.

Spurred by the appointment of Professor Meg Moritz to two key international educational posts, the School is moving forward in its efforts to globalize learning opportunities.

On July 1, Moritz became CU's UNESCO chair and the faculty director of international graduate education. For a year before that, though, she was unofficially working to identify and secure prospects for cooperative educational projects worldwide.

With phenomena such as the rapid advance of capitalization in China and the explosion of Web-based global media, Moritz said, it's necessary for CU and the School to provide students and faculty with better prospects for international interaction.

"This is a tremendous honor for the School, and a timely one as well," said SJMC Dean Paul Voakes. "Our new strategic plan calls for increased activity in international journalism education, and Professor Moritz's chair will provide us leverage to explore a variety of opportunities."

Moritz left her role as the School's associate dean for graduate studies to work full time in her new posts. Professor Robert Trager has been named associate dean.

Based in Paris, UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, established in 1945 to promote international cooperation among nearly 200 member states in the fields of education, science, culture and communication. UNESCO chairs are charged with linking schools in developing and transitional countries with U.S. schools.

"The idea is that chairs work with partner institutions in their particular field," Moritz said. "The chairs help provide exchange of ideas and people.

"Exchange programs can be complicated to negotiate because of differences in how universities are run in different countries," she said.

The result has already been a noticeable intensifying of the School's international ambitions, which have been on an upward spiral since the arrival of Professor Bella Mody in fall 2004 as the SJMC's first James E. de Castro Chair in Global Media Studies.

Last summer, Moritz presented lectures at six universities in China during a trip that took her to leading media-education facilities there.

Associate Professors Tom Yulsman, left, and Len Ackland meet in the Armory this fall with Tian Zhihui, left, and Hu Zhengrong, graduate school executive dean at Communication University of China.

"They were very impressed with what we're doing in the School, from the Advertising program to the Center for Environmental Journalism," she said.

This fall, two delegations of deans and directors made separate visits to CU and the School, one each from Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) and Communication University of China (CUC) in Beijing.

In October and November, Fulbright Scholar Herman Wasserman of the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, came to the School to present  "The Search for a Global Code of Media Ethics: a View from the South" and "The Media in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Shifts in the Landscape."

When broadcast students won a regional Emmy for their work, they received an invitation to a Turkish film festival from Anadolu University.

Under invitations secured by Moritz, Associate Professor David Slayden of the School's Advertising sequence participated in an exchange program at the Sorbonne in Paris this fall, and Adjunct Instructor Bill Weintraub did the same in fall 2005. Connections made by Moritz at SISU resulted in an invitation for Slayden and Senior Instructor Mindy Cheval to go to Shanghai in 2007 to present information about the School's "advertising a2b" program.

Moritz is a Senior Fulbright Scholar who has presented her research in more than 17 countries and in 2004 was a visiting professor at the Sorbonne and a guest lecturer at UNESCO. She said her efforts are part of an initiative by Susan Avery, CU graduate school interim dean and interim vice chancellor for research, to enhance exchange opportunities for faculty and students. Plans for other global programs are in the works.

"One is an exchange program with Science Po, a leading French university in Paris," Moritz said. The other U.S. universities partnering with Science Po, which is known formally as Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, are leading U.S. journalism programs: North Carolina, Northwestern, Columbia and Missouri. "The connections I've made through UNESCO were instrumental in getting CU invited into that program," she said.