|
2002 letter
September 5, 2002
Dear Faculty, Staff, Students, and the General Public:
I hope you will take a few moments to read this,
my annual update on our progress. The College of Communications
and Information Studies continues to grow, enhancing its stature
nationally by moving forward in a number of areas.
Students
This last spring we graduated nearly 300
students. Our courses are in high demand. The College's major
enrollment continues to grow to the current figure of over 1,200
undergraduates. In addition, our service courses, particularly
those related to oral communication, also are experiencing
considerable enrollment pressures.
Tracy Kershaw, a UK Senior from Hazard
and current editor of the Kentucky Kernel, has been awarded
$10,000 from the Scripps Howard Foundation's Top Ten Scholarship
program. She also placed fourth nationally in the 42nd annual
William Randolph Hearst Foundation's Journalism Awards Program,
the 'Pulitzer Prize' of college journalism, for her profile of
UK writer-in-residence Bobbie Ann Mason. Cindy Ledford, a
Department of Communication student, was awarded a prize of $100
and a plaque for the top student paper (out of the 82 student
papers) at the Southern Speech Communication Association
Undergraduate Honors Conference in April.
People
Our alumni, faculty, and staff continue to
accomplish wonderful things.
Former Dean Doug Boyd continues his
service as the Director of the Office of International Affairs
and was recently appointed as Co-Chair of the Provost Search
Advisory Committee. Dr. James Applegate is still on loan as
Vice-President for Academic Affairs at the Council on
Postsecondary Education. Dr. Thomas Lindlof has been
asked to extend his term as Editor of the prestigious Journal of
Broadcasting and Electronic Media. Professor Roy Moore
completed an American Council on Education Fellowship at the
University of Georgia. Dr. Enid Waldhart was named
Outstanding Faculty Academic Advisor at the University of
Kentucky in the fall of 2001.
We welcomed two new assistant professors this
year, Dr. Kevin Real in Communication and Dr. Linda
Lillard in Library and Information Sciences, while we also
celebrated the careers of our recent retirees, Professors Ramona
Rush and Maria Braden, who both had served UK for
nearly three decades.
Richard Wilson (BA, Journalism, 1966), a
retired Courier-Journal reporter and news bureau chief, has been
named interim director of the School of Journalism and
Telecommunications, succeeding Leland "Buck" Ryan.
Ryan will remain a faculty member at the school and director of
both the First Amendment Center and the Media Center for the
Future.
The speaker for the 25th Anniversary of the Joe
Creason Lecture was Angelo Henderson (BA, Journalism,
1985). He is currently a special project reporter for the
Detroit News. He received the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished
feature writing in 1999.
Shirley Rose retired in December after 4
decades of service to UK. Sheila Breeding, who was named
Outstanding Academic Advisor at the University of Kentucky in
the fall of 2001, has left to take a position in institutional
assessment at a California university. Cathy Hunt (SLIS,
1981) is replacing Shirley as Director of Undergraduate Services
and Mimi Haley has also joined our college level advising
staff as Sheila's replacement.
Graduate Programs
Our doctoral program continues its excellent
record of success. Most noteworthy is our recent recognition as
the leading program in the Southern Regional Education Board in
graduating African American doctoral students.
Our School of Library and Information Science
provides critical service to the Commonwealth as a leader in
distance learning, being ranked in a recent report as having the
largest number of distance learning students of any professional
program at UK. It is also part of a consortium, headed by
Louisiana State University, awarded $498,653, to develop a
distance learning curriculum in archive management.
Adel Iskandar, an UK teaching assistant
and Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Communication
appeared on Politically Incorrect to discuss his book, Al-Jazeera:
How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the
Middle East. The book was also featured on C-Span's BookTV.
Dr. Myria Watkins Allen (Ph.D., CJT, 1989) recently
received a $106,741 grant from the National Endowment for
Financial Education.
Research
Many of our current graduate and research
programs already have been identified as achieving Top Twenty
status, largely because of the success of our cohort of health
communication researchers in attracting nearly $30,000,000 in
outside research funding over the last decade.
Most recently, Dr. Phil Palmgreen and Dr.
Rick Zimmerman, co-principal investigators, have received
a $2,282,747 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to
study ways to craft advertising campaigns designed to deter
risky sexual behavior. Dr. Zimmerman now has a total of
$12,610,261 under contract with a variety of federal and state
agencies.
UK received grants (with Dr. Moore as
Co-Principal Investigator) from Sigma Delta Chi (Society of
Professional Journalists for $25,000) and the Appalachian
Regional Commission ($30,000) to support research on the
challenges to the rural press in covering policy issues of
importance to rural communities.
Development
As you can see, securing resources and attaining
excellence go hand-in-hand for a modern university. Over the
next two decades, building on a successful capital campaign and
the advantages that only private support can bring, we aspire to
achieve top five status, with all of our College's programs
recognized for their excellence. We appreciate your support of
our faculty and students. Your gifts have made a difference.
They have helped us to provide much-needed scholarships and are
the source of endowed professorships and teaching awards. Janice
Birdwhistell, our Development Officer, has been instrumental
in helping us raise our level of private giving and awareness of
our College's needs. If you have any questions regarding our
scholarship or our endowment programs, please contact her. Our
annual phonothan will be conducted October 20-24.
Recently, an endowed professorship was
established in the Department of Communication in honor of Dr. Gifford
Blyton. Dr. Blyton taught speech and communications from
1948 to 1975 and coached the university's debate team for 21
years. This gift was made possible through the efforts of
several of his former students. Stanley Craig, a 1969
graduate of UK, took the lead in this effort. Money from the
endowment will be used to support oral communication and
forensics education and research. Presently the endowment totals
almost $395,000 including an equal match from the state through
the Research Challenge Trust Fund III. This is the largest
endowment CCIS has ever received.
The Scripps Howard Foundation has
continued its generous support of our School of Journalism and
Telecommunications. We hosted a very successful Second Bowling
Executive-in-Residence lecture last November 1 featuring Mr. Frasier
P. Seitel. This annual lecture was funded largely by
contributions from Mr. Joseph Cullman. Jack Guthrie
has spearheaded the campaign to raise matching funds for this
program that also includes student scholarships.
Third Annual College Recognition Ceremony and Dinner
On November 1 we will celebrate with alumni,
friends, staff, faculty, and students our college award winners.
We will recognize the following:
- Outstanding Staff - Henry W. Daniels
- Teaching Excellence - Rosemary B. Bryant
- Community Service - Rick Roth
- Faculty Research - Sorin Matei
- Friend of the College - David Weller
- Outstanding Alumnus - Dr. Rona Roberts
We hope you will able to join us for this dinner that also
recognizes the students who have received major awards over the
last year.
In this letter, I have celebrated the
achievements of our alumni, students, faculty, and staff over
the last year. We hope that you can join with us in achieving
our goals, goals that will ensure the Commonwealth of Kentucky
is ready for its future in 2020.
Sincerely,
J. David Johnson, Dean
College of Communications and Information Studies
|
