Faculty News

Len Ackland

Associate Professor Len Ackland taught Reporting 3 and Reporting on the Environment, and the Nuclear West and Newsgathering 2 graduate courses. With Associate Professor Tom Yulsman, he also taught the yearlong Scripps Fellows Seminar.

“The graduate students and three Ted Scripps Fellows who took the Nuclear West class in fall ‘06 got a first-hand look at the uranium country of western Colorado and eastern Utah on a four-day field trip last November,” Ackland said. The trip included visits to a uranium mine preparing to reopen, the former mill town of Uravan that is now a Superfund cleanup site and a health unit in Grand Junction that serves former workers. “We also met with local residents and uranium entrepreneurs,” he said.

“My recent writing about nuclear issues includes an op-ed article in the Sunday edition of The Denver Post on March 25 discussing the misguided and hypocritical U.S. policy toward nuclear weapons. At the same time this country is preaching the value of nonproliferation, it is taking actions to refurbish its already huge nuclear arsenal.”

In May, the Center for Environmental Journalism that Ackland co-directs with Yulsman will celebrate its 10th anniversary of hosting the Ted Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism.

A total of 50 journalists from around the country have graduated from this program, which involves a two-semester residency on the CU Boulder campus, where the fellows audit classes, work on independent projects and serve as journalistic ambassadors to the wider campus community.

Associate Professor Shu-Ling Chen Berggreen taught Asian Media Systems, and Media and Ethnicity, as well as the graduate Mass Communications Research and Children & the Media courses. She also presented several papers on children and television, media and racial stereotypes, and media and political communication.

Paul Daugherty

Instructor Paul Daugherty (MA ‘93) taught Principles of Broadcast Production, NewsTeam, Advanced Camera Techniques and Advanced Video Editing.

“I traveled to Australia twice in the last year to produce a documentary about the human consumption of kangaroos called ‘Jump Steak.’ I also shot and edited the documentary, completing it in Spring 2007,” he said.

In the spring of 2006, students selected Daugherty to receive the School’s Outstanding Faculty Award. Last fall, he became head of the School’s Broadcast sequence.

Sandra Fish on a break during the 2006 Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI).

Instructor Sandra Fish taught the new Principles of Journalism course and Reporting 3 along with Legislative Reporting and Computer Assisted Reporting. She also taught the graduate Newsgathering 1 course and was adviser for The Campus Press.

Fish was elected secretary of the board of directors of the Journalism and Women Symposium in the fall; published a profile of four Colorado peace activists in The Denver Post’s Perspective section in February; and is serving as journalistic mentor to the daily political Web site Colorado Confidential (www.coloradoconfidential.com).

Assistant Professor Lee Hood (MA ‘97, Ph.D. ‘01) taught News-Team Boulder and Broadcast for Non-Majors.

She wrote the lead article in the Spring 2007 edition of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. The article, titled “Radio Reverb: Local News Re-Imported to Its Own Community,” is part of her ongoing research on corporate practices in radio news, including producing “local” news for other markets.

Lee Hood

“Last summer, I was invited to California to try out for ‘Jeopardy,’ my favorite TV show, after passing an initial on-line test,” Hood said. “The tryout was a lot of fun but also taught me what an exclusive group ‘Jeopardy’ contestants are. There are only 400 slots a year for the actual show. I never got the call to be on, but I’m determined to try again.”

Also last summer, she said she did a one-on-one interview with the CEO of Clear Channel Radio, John Hogan, and visited journalism alums Natalia Zea (’02) and Mike Bachmann (’04) in San Antonio, Kate Godwin (’99) in Oklahoma City and Andrea Pettes (’03) in Medford, Ore.

Stewart Hoover

Professor Stewart M. Hoover taught the graduate Media, Myth & Ritual course as well as the doctoral Proseminar in Communication Theory.

His latest book, “Religion in the Media Age,” hit the bookshelves this year to a very positive response. He directed the successful conference on “Fundamentalism and the Media” on the Boulder campus in October. The meeting was the inaugural event of the Center for Media, Religion and Culture, which he directs.

In June, Hoover presented two papers and acted as a respondent at the International Communication Association meetings in Dresden, Germany. Later that month, he presented a paper on his latest research at a seminar at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. In July, he attended the fifth international conference on Media, Religion and Culture in Sigtuna, Sweden, where he gave the closing plenary address. He also was a consultant and respondent at the Porticus Global Seminar in Media and Religion in Basel, Switzerland. He also attended the AEJMC Annual Convention in San Francisco in August.

In September, Hoover presented papers at the British Association for the Study of Religion in Bath, England, and at the New Directions in Audience Research conference at Oxford University. He attended the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Portland, Ore., and presented a paper on his research at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Washington, D.C.

Hoover also continued his field research, funded by the Lilly Endowment, into media, religion and masculinity. In January, he traveled to Sao Paulo, Brazil, in his capacity as steering committee chair for global conferences on media, religion and culture. In April, he presented lectures in Chicago and in Antwerp, Belgium.

Steve Jones presides over graduation ceremonies in Macky Auditorium. (Photo/Catherine Yrisarri)

Assistant Dean Steve Jones taught Directing and Advanced Television Production. He also was adviser for the CU Sports Magazine television show.

“We’re still having great success with our CU Sports Magazine show,” he said. “And I’m still learning all the great features of the new television studio” in the ATLAS building on campus.

As chair of the Council of Associate/Assistant Deans, Jones is involved in the review of the new student information system that is being considered as a replacement for the University’s current one.

Hun Shik Kim

Associate Professor Hun Shik Kim taught TV Reporting and the graduate course Newsgathering for TV.
He also taught a course he developed, Reporting War and Disaster.

“The course is interesting and timely, especially in times of war and conflict around the world,” he said. “The course covers news reporting during various wars, conflicts and disasters around the world in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students peruse news-reporting examples of great American journalists who covered these wars and conflicts. I sometimes tell the students my experience as a TV correspondent covering wars and conflicts.”

He also published two co-authored articles on peace journalism and the media coverage of Asian conflicts.

“I have written a paper on the state of Iraqi journalism with one of our graduate students. This summer, I plan to expand this study to produce another research paper in the fall,” he said.

Mike McDevitt

Associate Professor Mike McDevitt taught Media Ethics, Reporting 2 and the Media & Politics graduate course.

He received a grant of $85,100 from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. The project, titled Colors of Socialization, explores how teenagers acquire and express civic identities in what the news media have come to refer to as “red” states and “blue” states.

“My research team interviewed high school students before and after the 2006 election campaigns to investigate influences of news media attention and political conversations at school, at home with parents and with friends,” he said.

“The study is motivated in part by the hypothesis that family-oriented discussion and news-media use tend to promote support for conventional political participation, as reflected in dutiful voting and partisan identification,” McDevitt said. “Peer-oriented conversations, on the other hand, could engender support for confrontational activism and participation in legal and illegal activism such as street protests and creating Web sites to embarrass corporations.”

McDevitt’s article on family political communication was published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research. Another article, documenting how deliberation habits and skills taught in civic curricula can diffuse from the classroom to the living room as students prompt political conversations with parents, was published in Communication Education. He also supervised a content analysis of newspaper depictions of political dissent. “The project looks at news coverage on controversial CU ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill as a case study of how anti-intellectualism in the press stifles dissent by distorting the actual ideas behind challenges to mainstream political beliefs. Specifically, the data analysis shows how Colorado newspapers systematically excluded description of Churchill’s ideas about U.S. foreign policy even as the papers devoted extraordinary amounts of attention to Churchill during the winter and spring of 2005,” he said.

Bella Mody

Professor Bella Mody, the School’s deCastro chair in global media studies, taught Contemporary Media, Global Media Empires and the Qualitative Research Methods doctoral course.

In October, she was the plenary speaker at the first World Congress on Communication and Development, organized by the World Bank.

While Mody’s book on media representations of genocide in Darfur is being completed, she and graduate students Alex Ingersoll and Dan Stencel have started a project on historical trends on media-related doctoral dissertations on developing countries. It details topics, research methods and advisers at universities in the United States and Canada. Mody also led a quality-assessment team to review the Caribbean Institute for Mass Communication at the University of the West Indies last fall.

Meg Moritz

Professor Meg Moritz taught Principles of Journalism and Documentary Criticism and Analysis.

In 2006, she chaired the campuswide Task Force on International Graduate education, which supports the University’s role as a global research institution.

“We are interested in facilitating graduate student exchanges as well as creating opportunities for research projects that include multiple partners from countries around the world,” Moritz said. “In my capacity as task force chair and as UNESCO chair, I visited universities in Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an in summer 2006 where I lectured, conducted seminars and met with various deans and directors.”

Last fall, colleagues who Moritz met at the Communication University of China and at Shanghai International Studies University sent delegations to Boulder, where both schools signed agreements with CU to become partners in research and teaching projects.

In January, she lectured at the Sorbonne, had meetings at UNESCO’s international headquarters in Paris and worked on research exchange agreements with French universities, including Sciences Po, the prestigious political and social science institute in St. Germain-des-Pres. Sciences Po now has an official exchange agreement with CU that allows SJMC students to attend Sciences Po international journalism programs.

“On the film front, I am an adviser to ‘Whiz Kids,’ a documentary about the nation’s most accomplished high school science students,” Moritz said. “Additionally, I am consulting and field-producing for a UNESCO historical documentary on global slave trading.”

In 2006, she presented papers about her research on Hurricane Katrina and the media at the annual conferences of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in San Francisco and the National Communication Association and at St. John’s College of Law in New York.

Associate Professor Janice Peck taught Media & Public Culture during the fall and spring semesters.

“This course is being phased out as part of a new undergraduate curriculum. As one of the creators of the course – along with Professor Andrew Calabrese – and the person who taught the class the first two times it was offered, it felt fitting that I was also at the helm in its final semesters,” she said.

Peck also taught the graduate Critical Theories of Media and Culture and the doctoral course Proseminar in Communication Theory.

Her essay examining a central theoretical debate in the field of media studies, “Why We Shouldn’t Be Bored With the Political Economy vs. Cultural Studies Debate,” was published in the fall edition of Cultural Critique.

In August, Peck presented a paper titled “Transcending Race? The Racial Politics of Oprah Winfrey’s Enterprise and Bill Clinton’s New Liberalism” for the Critical & Cultural Studies Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s annual conference in San Francisco. She was also the respondent for the division’s Top Faculty & Student Papers Session.

As a member of the School’s Annual Evaluation Committee – with Len Ackland, Andrew Calabrese and Brett Robbs – Peck helped develop a set of policies and procedures for evaluating faculty performance that was approved by the faculty in fall 2006.

Professor and Associate Dean Robert Trager taught Mass Communication Law and the Press and the Constitution graduate course. In July, he became associate dean, with responsibility for the School’s graduate programs and summer session.

Maura Troester Nuñez

Assistant Professor Maura Troester Nuñez taught Branding and Positioning and Advertising Campaigns.

She gave birth to a daughter, Sophia Marie Nuñez, on May 17, 2006, and spent fall semester on maternity leave. She said she is happy to be back and is enjoying her work.

Associate Professor Jan Whitt taught Contemporary Media, Critical Thinking and Writing, Literary Journalism and Media History for the SJMC. She taught Contemporary Media for CU’s Continuing Education program; Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies for the Department of Women and Gender Studies; and Literature and Journalism of the West – the CU Center of the American West’s capstone course.

Jan Whitt with her dog, Maggie, on a mountaintop near Vail.

Whitt has two books in press, “Reflections in a Critical Eye: Essays on Carson McCullers” by University Press of America and “Women in American Journalism: A New History” by University of Illinois Press. The latter is dedicated to Willard D. “Wick” Rowland Jr., former SJMC dean. Whitt received a Big 12 Faculty Fellowship that made it possible for her to conduct research on a book under contract about Hazel Brannon Smith, a Mississippi newspaper editor during the Civil Rights movement. In addition to presenting papers at seven conferences, Whitt published two articles, “‘To Do Some Good and No Harm’: The Literary Journalism of John Steinbeck” in Steinbeck Studies and “When Fiction Becomes Reality: Authorial Voice in The Door in the Floor, Secret Window and Swimming Pool” in Popular Culture Review.

This year, she was recognized as a top faculty mentor during the Norlin Scholars Program graduation ceremony, and three students from Whitt’s Literary Journalism class were selected to present papers with her at the Popular Culture Association of the South conference in Savannah, Ga.