Faculty News

In This Issue
Associate Professor Len Ackland
Instructor Sandra Fish
Assistant Professor Kendra Gale
Assistant Professor Lee Hood
Professor Stewart M. Hoover
Assistant Dean Steve Jones
Associate Professor Michael McDevitt
Associate Professor Janice Peck
Associate Professor Brett Robbs
Associate Professor David Slayden
Professor Michael Tracey
Professor Robert Trager
Associate Professor Jan Whitt
Associate Professor Tom Yulsman

Associate Professor Len Ackland taught Reporting on the Environment, Precision Journalism and The Nuclear West. He also co-taught the yearlong weekly seminar for the Ted Scripps Fellows in Environmental Journalism. His main research focuses on the question of whether nuclear power should be part of the solution to global warming. "I'm particularly looking at the German decision to eliminate nuclear power from the country's electrical grid by 2021, interesting since neighboring France gets about 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear reactors," he said. This spring he received two awards to support that research during his upcoming sabbatical year: a Guggenheim Fellowship and a scholarship to attend a two-week Fulbright Commission seminar in Berlin and Brussels.

Instructor Sandra Fish taught Principles of Journalism, Reporting 3, Computer Assisted Reporting, Newsgathering 1, Public Affairs Reporting and News Editing. With News-Editorial student Erika Usui, she again helped teach a newspaper elective class for Polaris at Ebert Elementary School in Denver and visited The Daily Journal in Kankakee, Ill., to do some staff training in April. A ColoradoConfidential.com project she oversaw, which examined the success of state lawmakers in getting bills passed, won first place for online feature story from the Colorado chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Assistant Professor Kendra Gale taught Consumer Insights; Media, Self and Society; and Branding and Positioning. She is developing an undergraduate visual communication course.

"I've always included lots of experiential learning in my class, but over the last year I've started thinking much more concretely about the impact of classroom activities on life outside the classroom and vice versa – and how to integrate those aspects," she said.

To that end, she received a civic engagement grant to develop a first-year course for the Dean's Scholars and participated in the pilot course for a residential advisory program in the Cheyenne-Arapaho dormitories last fall: The Contemporary Research University and the Student Citizen. "It was an amazing experience to begin to understand the first-year experience from a student perspective," she said.

She is a member of the President's Teaching and Learning Collaborative to explore different teaching models to help develop students as lifelong learners as opposed to students motivated by grades. Gale also received another civic engagement grant to work with SJMC faculty to integrate elements of civic engagement into their courses. She is on the undergraduate committee for the Flagship 2030 plan.

She has a chapter on account planning in "Idea Industry: How to Crack the Advertising Career Code," edited by Associate Professor Brett Robbs and Deborah Morrison. It's based on interviews with planners around the country.

Assistant Professor Lee Hood (MA '97, Ph.D. '01) taught NewsTeam, Newsgathering for TV and the Broadcast Projects course. In April, she was chosen to receive the Pyle Award for outstanding teaching by an assistant professor. This year Hood worked with the Federal Communications Commission, sharing information about her research on local radio. She also made a research trip to Blacksburg, Va., home of Virginia Tech University, for an upcoming article about media and community in extraordinary circumstances.

Professor Stewart Hoover taught Media Institutions and Economics. In January, he attended a research seminar on religious transnationalism in London and presented a paper at a conference in Mexico. In March, he presented a paper at a conference at Texas A&M University and gave a lecture at Birkbeck College, the University of London. His efforts on behalf of the Center for Media, Religion and Culture included planning for a conference on "Media, Spirituality, and Social Change," which will take place on the Boulder Campus on June 4-7.

Assistant Dean Steve Jones taught TV Production 2 and 3 in conjunction with the NewsTeam Boulder and the Broadcast Projects course. He also was the adviser for CU SportsMag, the half-hour television show about CU and Boulder sports. He is chair of the Council of Associate/Assistant Deans, vice chair of the Boulder Campus Planning Commission and a member of committees working on the new degree audit program and on Campus Solutions, the new student-information system.

Associate Professor Michael McDevitt taught Mass Communication Research.

"I am working with a producer on a documentary that will portray how families cope with partisan wrangling during the final weeks leading up to Election Day 2008," he said. He also supervised research on the roles of schools, media and families in the cultivation of civic identity among teenagers in red and blue states. He said some preliminary findings suggest that activities such as discussion and disagreement in conversations with parents and peers are more consequential for liberal identity development than for conservative identity.

He received a grant from CU-Boulder's Center to Advance Research & Teaching in the Social Sciences to support his ongoing research project on how the press stifles public deliberation on ideas that challenge core ideological beliefs, such as American innocence on matters of foreign policy.

"I interviewed Colorado journalists who contributed to news coverage on Professor Ward Churchill during the early phase of the controversy over his essay on 9/11. An analysis of newspaper content addresses the question as to why specific ideas in Churchill's argument were described or not described in the news media," he said.

Associate Professor Janice Peck taught History of Mass Communication, Proseminar in Communication Theory I and II, and Sociology of News. She presented research papers at the International Communication Association conference in San Francisco and the Union for Democratic Communication in Vancouver, Canada. Her new book, "The Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era," is to be released soon by Paradigm Publishers, which describes the work as "the first book to look at Oprah in the context of the greater political and economic world."

Associate Professor Brett Robbs taught Introduction to Creative Concepts and Advertising Campaigns. In April, he was chosen to receive the Murrow Award for outstanding teaching by a tenured professor. With Deborah Morrison, he edited "Idea Industry: How to Crack the Advertising Career Code." Robbs and fellow authors conducted interviews with more than 100 top professionals. The book provides an inside look at the major areas in an advertising agency and offers practical advice about how to launch an advertising career.

Associate Professor David Slayden taught Introduction to Creative Concepts, Advertising & Society and Issues in a Commercial Culture. Slayden's students have repeatedly won, placed in or been finalists in The One Show and currently work at a variety of top agencies.

Professor Michael Tracey taught Proseminar in Communication Theory 1; Power, Politics & Media; and Mass Communication & Public Opinion. He attended various conferences and presented papers on the future of the Channel Four network in the United Kingdom.

Tracey worked with graduate student Aubri McDonald to present work on the alleged "CSI effect." "The CSI effect is the suggestion from law enforcement circles that because of the success of the television programs focusing on crime scene investigation, jurors are being led to believe that all cases require forensics, even when cases don't have forensic evidence," he said. "And, it is suggested, criminals have now altered their behavior because they are more aware of how trace evidence left at a crime scene can be used against them."

His ongoing interest in the 1996 JonBenet Ramsey murder in Boulder resulted in his recent essay, "From Christmas to August: Murder, Media Mayhem and the Condition of the Kulchur."

Professor Robert Trager taught Media Law, Press and Constitution and Proseminar in Communication Theory II. He is the School's associate dean with responsibility for the graduate programs and Summer Session. With Joseph Russomanno (Ph.D. '93) and Susan Dente Ross, he is preparing a new edition of "The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication," due for summer 2009 publication.

Associate Professor Jan Whitt taught Contemporary Mass Media, Women in Popular Culture and Literary Journalism. She also taught Introduction to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) Studies for the LGBT Certificate Program and Literature and Journalism of the West, the capstone course for the Center of the American West.

Her book, "Reflections in a Critical Eye: Essays on Carson McCullers," won the Eric Hoffer Book Award in the culture category.

Whitt won a Joseph Kerns Research Grant from the American Journalism Historians Association and the Dorothy Martin Woman Faculty Research Award from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at CU. Both awards are for the proposal for "Burning Crosses and Activist Journalism: Hazel Brannon Smith and the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement," which is under contract with University Press of Florida.

She also published "Final Letters to the World: Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck and Artistic Entropy" in the Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas; "From Compassion to Redemption: An Unspoken Hunger as Narrative Experiment" in Southwestern American Literature; and essays on the novels "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" and "Wise Blood" in The New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Whitt presented papers at the African Americans in Film and Television Symposium, American Journalism Historians Association, Rocky Mountain Communication Association, the Southwest Education Council for Journalism and Mass Communication, and the University of Colorado Women's Symposium.

She continues to volunteer for Golden Retriever Rescue of the Rockies and enjoys running and hiking with her retrievers, Mackenzie and Riley.

Associate Professor Tom Yulsman taught Science Writing, Newsgathering II, Reporting 3 and Science/Environmental Journalism. He was also the co-organizer of the yearlong weekly seminar for the Ted Scripps Fellows in Environmental Journalism.

After receiving a $10,000 grant to help him make the transition to multimedia journalism, he worked on a feature article and video on biofuels for Audubon Magazine, which came out last fall.

He is coordinating efforts by the news faculty to devise a new model for The Campus Press that will preserve an independent media voice for students while also meeting the curricular needs of the School.

"On a more personal note, I am more dedicated than ever to competitive running at the master's level," he said.

"I'm training intensively this spring for upcoming races, with the hope of continuing to come in the top three in my age group and winning more than occasionally. I am also sleeping occasionally."