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Faculty news |
Associate Professor Len Ackland, director of the School's Center for Environmental Journalism, taught Reporting on the Environment and undergraduate and graduate computer-assisted research in 1998. He was also awarded tenure.
"My main research focuses on public policy regarding nuclear weapons production and the cleanup of former facilities," he said. He has just finished a history of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. It is titled "Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West" and will be published by the University of New Mexico Press in the summer.
"Making a Real Killing is a fast-moving story told through the experiences of the ranchers, politicians, workers, scientists, managers and activists who lives were deeply affected by this dangerous plant," he said. "The book examines the way Americans participated in building a nuclear weapons arsenal capable of destroying the human species."
As CEJ director, Ackland also runs the Ted Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism, under a three-year, $545,000 grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation.
His published works were:
- "Nuclear Waste, Secrecy and the Mass Media," co-authored with JoAnn Valenti and Karen Dorn Steele, in Science and Engineering Ethics
- "Sagas of Nuclear Secrecy," co-authored with JoAnn Valenti and Karen Dorn Steele, SEJournal, Summer 1998.
Ackland was presenter of the School's Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting at the Denver Press Club's Damon Runyon Dinner in February 1998, and was an organizer and panel moderator at the Society of Environmental Journalists' national conference in October.
He is a contributing editor for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Ackland is a member of the board of directors for the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C., and serves as director of CU's Interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Environmental Policy.
Associate Professor Bill Celis taught graduate and undergraduate reporting courses. He also taught a new course on Realities and Myths in Media for the University's residential hall academic program.
"As a former journalist who covered education issues for several years, I continue to focus on public education as my principal area of research," he said. "Much of my writing centers on the national school reform movement and how it relates to inner cities where most of the nation's minority students attend public school.
"In the past couple of years, however, my writing has branched into two additional areas: media criticism and trends, and the West and its issues and institutions. The breadth of my research, taking the form of newspaper, magazine and opinion and editorial page pieces, has allowed me to remain current in teaching reporting classes, mostly at the undergraduate level, in that I bring current journalism experience into my classes."
Celis has completed a book proposal on rural education and one-room schools that will be published by Public Affairs, a new nonfiction publishing house affiliated with Harper Collins.
His published works in 1997-98 were:
- "Is There Inequitable School Funding?" published in the February 1997 Vista Magazine.
-"Operation Push Rally," published in USA Today in February 1997.
- "Denver Airport a Runaway Success," in USA Today, in February 1997.
- "Mines Long Abandoned to Dark Bringing New Dangers to Light," in USA Today in March 1997
- "A Matter of Choice," in the Boulder Daily Camera in August 1997.
- "Denver Strives to Make Bilingual Education More Than Lip Service" in the April 19, 1998, Perspective section of The Denver Post.
- "Will Charter Schools Transform Education?" in the July/August The American Prospect.
Celis was a panelist at the Sigma Delta Chi, Society of Professional Journalists, National Convention, Denver on October 1997 on a panel: "Establishing a Rainbow Rolodex."
He made a presentation to the Colorado High School Press Association, Boulder, October 1997.
Celis also hosted three programs for "Inside Our Schools," Boulder Valley School District 30-minute community access program (Channel 8, Boulder) on education issues in September, October and December 1997.
He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists' National Diversity Committee and the Colorado Press Association's Education Committee. He is also faculty sponsor for CU's SPJ student chapter.
In October, he was a moderator at Society of Professional Journalists' convention in Los Angeles for a panel on "Minorities: A Redefinition." He was a member of a panel on "American Journalism in the 1990s," at the Freedom Forum Pacific Coast Center in San Francisco in November.
Associate Professor Roslyn Dauber taught classes in documentary television, principles of broadcast journalism and writing the docudrama in 1998.
She continued to work as a practitioner, methodology builder and philosopher in using media technology to further cultural and cross-cultural communication.
Her efforts focused on helping people who have not been participants in the creation, design and direction of digital technology to make use of it, most notably Bon-po monks of Tibet.
"These groups do not consider themselves marginalized," Dauber said. "They have their own indigenous and historic frame of reference which they wish to keep and disseminate. What it means to be the facilitator for such groups has been my active interest."
Dauber worked to establish the Tibetan Media Archive Project on campus, with the Human Rights Archive in Norlin Library agreeing to house it. Eleven graduate and undergraduate students and one Tibetan student and monk spent six months logging and cutting the first videos of the project. The effort is designed to record rituals for the ancient Bon-po religion, which has a dearth of older and middle-aged monks.
The project was featured in local television and newspaper stories.
Dauber developed a new course on the social aspects of new media, as well as its interactive Web site. The course extends students' understanding of how radically new media is affecting their world and their job prospects, she said.
She also served on the review panel this year for the Feminist Scholarship Division of the International Communications Association, critiquing the papers related to feminism and new media.
Under Dauber's direction, a number of undergraduates worked with the Tibetan Media Archive Project either in an independent study capacity or a short-term paid research assistants. She also designed and proposed a new course for the broadcast sequence on digital editing that is scheduled to be taught as a special topics course for next fall.
She presented "Gender Differences in Use of the Internet in Higher Education: Research & Teaching" at the Association of Women in Higher Education 1998 meeting in San Francisco.
She also presented the following papers in 1998:
- "Avatars & Intelligent Agents," VISCOMM conference, June, Winter Park.
- "Digital Media Documents the Only Tibetan Nunnery in the World, " VISCOMM conference, June, Winter Park.
- "How Gender Matters When Using the Internet in Higher Education," International Association for Mass Communication Research conference, July, Glasgow, Scotland.
- "The Sacred Meets the Secular in the Construction of Culture: Bon-po Refugee Clergy Use Electronic Media to Preserve Indigenous Religion," International Association for Mass Communication Research, July, Glasgow, Scotland.
Grants and fellowships Dauber received in 1998 were:
- A $5,000 CRCW grant for Tibetan Archive project.
- A $2,000 grant from the Goldfarb Foundation.
- $1,000 from the Hope Foundation. She also received $4,000 as a Colorado Endowment of the Artists Video Fellow.
Dauber gave a public talk and film presentation of Menri Monastery at the International Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe, N.M., in April 1998 as part of the museum's Tibetan Film Festival and Exhibition.
Screenings of her film, "The Biography of His Holiness the 33rd Menri Trizin," were held on the CU campus and in New York, Washington, D.C., Charlottesville, Va., San Francisco and Los Angeles in November and December.
"Bon-po Nuns in China" was screened last fall by the Ford Foundation, Luce Foundation and Asia Foundation to help raise funds for the nuns.
With students, Dauber created the Digital Documentary Studio and posted it on the Web at www.Colorado.edu/Journalism/DDS/
Her public speeches included a talk on the Bon-po at a Louisville church prior to a Tibetan ceremony in December. She was also a panelist for the Conference of World Affairs session on New Media.
Dauber was instrumental in having the mayor of Boulder declare the week of Dec. 9 as Tibetan Bon-po Week in the city. She organized a reception and two local public speaking engagements for His Holiness Lungtok Tenpai Nyima ? the 33rd Menri Trizin, or head, of the Bon-po sect.
As a Colorado Endowment for the Arts Fellow, she participated in the Colorado Online Studio.
Associate Professor Bruce Henderson is director of the School's New Media Center and adviser for the Campus Press student newspaper. He was promoted to the tenure-track position of associate professor in the fall. Henderson taught the Newspaper Practicum, Advanced Editing and Advertising Practicum courses in 1998.
"I am interested in the scholarship of teaching, specifically the pedagogical roots of teaching with technology," he said. "I make numerous presentations each semester on technology and teaching, and conduct many outreach programs for media professionals. I design and build World Wide Web programs that are tools for teaching."
Henderson received a $20,000 Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society, or ATLAS, grant from the University for creation of the digital newsroom course, with Associate Dean Meg Moritz.
In 1998, he designed several new online teaching applications, including a Web-based assignment submission and editing program called WebEdit used to implement paperless reporting and editing courses. He also:
- Created a standardized news editing course on a Web site so that adjunct instructors can use it as a guide and resource. The program Henderson invented to perform the function is called WebCite. An example is at nmc2.colorado.edu/edit/course.html
- Created a custom newsgroup for the new media use and design course, located at nmc2.colorado.edu/newmedia/news.html
- Created Web Grammarian. This program takes assignments submitted by students over the Web and automatically checks for grammar errors. Each error in grammar becomes a link to a grammar rule. This program is in prototype and is being used at nmc2.colorado.edu/critique/grammar.html
- Created a research database exploring issues of online publications, online production and newsroom design. The database is located at nmc2.colorado.edu/end/nmc1.html
Henderson revamped the advertising practicum course, adding an online component to the print advertising component of the course. His students helped create an online advertising mall, located at www.cubouldermall.com
He serves as the Faculty Teaching Excellence program's technology liaison to the School. In that capacity he works with the School's faculty members to implement World Wide Web tools into teaching and assist them with other technical issues.
In 1998, Henderson revised his CD-ROM textbook, "Electronic Journalism."
His presentations included:
- "An Evolution in Teaching Interactively: Using the Web and Multi-media CD-ROMS," part of CU's FTEP Education Forum in Teaching, Learning, and Technology in February 1998. The presentation is on the Web at nmc.colorado.edu/teach
- "The Ever-expanding Web: Is Your Newsletter online?" (nmc.colorado.edu/3cma/3cma.html) at the regional conference of the City-County Communications and Marketing Association in Boulder.
- "How Television Stations are Beginning to Outpace Newspapers in Web Development," a presentation for the Colorado Press Association in a statewide video conference in August. This presentation, which explores the use of video in Web news sites. It is located at nmc2.colorado.edu/tv2/tv0.html
- Two sessions about Web publishing for the Colorado High School Press Association's annual convention in Boulder in August: High School students can publish their newspapers online using the CHSPA's Web site (media.colorado.edu/highschoolpress). The site automates much of the process.
- "An Evolution in Teaching Interactively: Using the Web and Multi-media CD-ROMs" at the Oct. 27 Faculty Teaching Excellence Program's Education Forum in Teaching, Learning and Technology (nmc2.colorado.edu/teach/teaching1.html).
Henderson's grants in 1998 in included:
- An Outreach Award of $5,000 from the CU Division of Continuing Education for hosting workshops for journalism professionals through the Colorado Press Association.
- A $375,000 National Telecommunications and Information Administration grant, "Public Media and the Performing Arts: Serving Geographically and Socially Isolated Communities." This $1 million total project, which has about 20 partners throughout the state, now is generally known as the Virtual Chautauaqua project. Its home page is: www.virtualchautauqua.org. Using the Boulder Community Network as a model, this project makes Colorado performing arts available to isolated communities by digitizing artists' works and putting them on the World Wide Web. The project is using streaming audio-video technologies and offers formal programs for K-12 students and teachers, people with disabilities and artists.
Henderson organized and participated in judging a statewide World Wide Web contest for online newspapers in Colorado, through the Colorado Press Association. The awards were made during the annual convention of the CPA in February 1998 and 1999. The judging results are available at nmc.colorado.edu/contest
He also helped create the Bon-po (Tibet) Web pages for SJMC Professor Roslyn Dauber (nmc.colorado.edu/bonpo) and created a custom hypertext newsgroup for her in connection with the Bonpo project (media.colorado.edu/bonpo/bonpo.html).
Henderson is chairman of the Colorado Press Association's Technology Committee. He hosted a statewide video conference for the Colorado Press Association, featuring attorney Tom Kelley, who talked about freedom of information issues on Nov. 16.
Henderson also hosted a statewide conference at CU for the Colorado Press Association, focusing on using Adobe Photoshop in newspaper design and reproduction.
Assistant Dean Steve Jones taught courses in television production and NewsTeam in 1998. He was involved in a variety of projects dealing with electronic media management, new technologies and development of technology for distance education.
Jones provided academic advising for some 400 students during the academic year, conducted advising workshops and organized summer new-student orientation sessions.
He was co-executive producer of 36 NewsTeam Boulder telecasts, of News Team Boulder's election coverage in November and of 19 CU Sports Magazine television shows, all seen live on Boulder cable Channel 55.
He was executive producer of six CU women's basketball games, six women's volleyball games and nine Conference on World Affairs panels. Coverage of one of the volleyball games received a Regional Emmy award and coverage of one of the basketball games won a first-place Community Television Award in the category of student-volunteer entertainment.
Jones is head of the School's Scholarship Committee, and the course and faculty assignment group. He served on the School's subcommittee for relocation to the Armory and is the School's Y2K liaison.
Jones remained heavily involved in campuswide organizations and projects. He was chair of the Boulder Campus Planning Commission and the New Student Confirmed Registration subcommittee.
He was a member of the Strategic Capital Assessment Group, the Council of Associate Deans, the Instructional Computing Working Group, the SIS users group, the Sexual Harassment Investigative Panel, the Classroom Space Committee, the Norlin Scholars Development and Advisory Committee, the Community Access/Educational Channel subcommittee for the City of Boulder. He is also chair of the Advisory Board for the Radio/Television Program of the St. Vrain Valley School District's Career Development Center in Longmont.
Professor Robert Trager, associate dean for graduate studies, served as a faculty associate in the Graduate School during the fall 1998 semester.
Trager teaches mass media law and press and the Constitution. He was named Outstanding Faculty by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication students at the School's May 1998 commencement. He also was honored as an Outstanding Professor of 1998 by the Mortar Board Honor Society.
Trager conducts research in the areas of communication law, freedom of expression and telecommunication regulation and policy. Two of his books were published in 1998: "The First Amendment in the Twenty-First Century," written with Donna L. Dickerson, and "Balancing on the Wire: The Art of Managing Media Organizations," written with James Redmond (Ph.D. '93) Trager and Kent R. Middleton wrote the 1999 Update to "The Law of Public Communication," fourth edition. The fifth edition of the book, by Middleton, Bill F. Chamberlin and Trager, will be published in fall 1999.
Also in 1998, the Southwestern Mass Communication Journal published "The Narrow View of the Wide Screen: Public Adoption of Tomorrow's Television," by Trager and Joseph A. Russomanno (Ph.D. '93). He was a panelist speaking on "Cyberspace Law" at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication annual conference in August 1998 and a speaker at the International Bar Association Conference in Vancouver, B.C., in September 1998.
Trager was founding editor of Communication Law and Policy, a law journal sponsored by the Law Division of AEJMC and published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. He stepped down as editor at the end of 1998.
Associate Professor Jan Whitt taught contemporary mass media, media history, literary journalism, mass media writing, modern and contemporary literature, and women and popular culture. She also developed, taught and supervised teaching assistants for the new Critical Thinking and Writing course.
"I continue to conduct research in media history, women's issues, gay studies and literary journalism," she said. "My service revolves around the University and School of Journalism and Mass Communication committees and presentations about teaching. I also occasionally work for local companies such as Coors and Celestial Seasonings as a paid consultant in business writing."
Whitt's published writing in 1998 included:
- "We Never Promised You Objectivity," Society of Environmental Journalists Journal, Winter 1998.
- "The 'Very Simplicity of the Thing': Edgar Allan Poe and the Murders He Wrote," in "The Detective in Fiction, Film, and Television," edited by Jerome P. Delamater and Ruth Prigozy and published by Greenwood Press in Westport, Conn. o Entries in "The Encyclopedia of Television News," edited by Michael Murray and published by Greenwood Press in Westport, Conn.
- Entries in "The Walt Whitman Encyclopedia," edited by J. R. LeMaster and James D. Wilson and published by Garland in New York City.
She had three reviews published in 1998:
- "Mark Twain's Letters" in American Journalism.
- "A Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism" in American Journalism.
- "Time's Stop in Savannah," in The Georgia Historical Quarterly.
She also was a reviewer for Journalism History.
Whitt received $1,200 in travel grants from the Committee on Research and Creative Work and the Graduate Committee on Arts and Humanities at CU. The grants made possible research on women's publications in Santa Fe and San Francisco during the summer.
She presented "Gender in Advertising" to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy conference in July in Snowmass
In the fall, she received the Kappa Kappa Gamma faculty award and an Outstanding Professor award from the Mortar Board Honor Society.
Whitt has had several papers accepted for publication in 1999:
- Two chapters will appear in "Historical Dictionary of Women's Press Organizations, " edited by Elizabeth Burt and published by Greenwood Press of Westport, Conn.
- Six encyclopedia entries will appear in "Reader's Guide to Gay and Lesbian Studies," edited by Timothy Murphy and published by Dearborn Publishers in Chicago.
- One article was accepted for a collection, "Reflections in a Critical Eye: New Essays on Carson McCullers," edited by Keith Byerman and published by the University of Georgia Press in Athens, Ga.
- One encyclopedia entry will appear in "The Media in America," fifth edition. It will be edited by William David Sloan and James D. Startt and published by Vision Press in Northport, Ala.
Associate Professor Tom Yulsman taught science writing, news editing and the weekly seminar for the five working journalists participating in the Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism.
He is deputy director for the School's Center for Environmental Journalism.
"I do two basic things: As a science journalist, I cover the natural world, and as a teacher, I train journalism students how to do the same," he said. "
This year, a third activity came to be equally important as these other two: working with scientists who do research on the natural world. "This marks a noteworthy milestone in my career at CU. In the past, I would have seen these scientists primarily as sources of information for my stories, and while they still are sources, today they also are my colleagues. Increasingly, they are seeking my help in learning how to communicate scientific issues such as global climate change and biodiversity loss to the public--and in teaching their students how to do a better job of public communication when they become full-fledged members of the scientific community."
Yulsman has redesigned the science writing course, expanded the news editing course to include sections on magazine editing and produced an online template with Associate Professor Bruce Henderson that standardizes instruction and provides online editing resources for instructors and students.
His published work included:
- "The Day the Sea Stood Still," a feature in The Washington Post on Sept. 9 describing an episode of global warming in Earth's past that "holds sobering lessons for us as we prod the climate with our emissions of greenhouse gases," he said. (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/horizon/sept98/sea.htm) A modified version of the story was published in early 1999 in the Geotimes journal, a publication of the American Geological Institute.
- "The Origin of Planets," a feature in Astronomy magazine's special issue on cosmic origins. The article will form the core of a chapter for Yulsman's upcoming book, also about cosmic origins.
- "Seismic Mystery Down Under," an Earth magazine feature about scientific detective work surrounding a possible test of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist group in the Australian outback.
- "The Best Lawn," a feature on natural lawn care for This Old House magazine written with Claudia Glenn Dowling.
- Two entries for an upcoming travel guide to the natural history of North America, which will be published in 1999 in a joint effort between the Discovery Channel and Insight Guides.
His works in progress include:
- "Before the Big Bang," scheduled for publication in the September issue of Astronomy, a feature on new theories concerning the ultimate origin of the universe.
- A story on the geology and paleontology of Dinosaur Ridge written as part of a natural history guidebook to North America to be jointly published by the Discovery Channel and Insight travel guides.
- A review of "Prehistoric Journey," the Denver Museum of Natural History's exhibit on the history of life.
- "Tree Islands of the Tundra," a feature on alpine ecological research scheduled for publication in Audubon magazine.
Yulsman organized the October symposium on "Environmental Journalism: Beat or Bias?" at CU and was a member of the planning committee for the "Inaugural Conference of the Colorado Magazine Writers Institute" held in September on campus.