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2000 letter
September 21, 2000
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 1,016
undergraduates, the largest absolute growth at UK this semester.
In addition, our service courses, particularly oral
communication, are also experiencing considerable enrollment
pressures.
Over the last year many of our graduate students
received signal honors: Shawn Long was one of three
teaching assistants who received the Lexington Campus's
Outstanding Teaching Award; Suzie Allard was awarded a
Presidential Fellowship; Edward Elsner received a
Multi-Year Fellowship and the Daniel R. Reedy Quality
Achievement Award; Michael Farrell was selected for a
Kentucky Opportunity Fellowship; and Pamela Slone
obtained an Academic Fellowship.
After placing in the top ten a year earlier, the
Kentucky Kernel won a 1999 Pacemaker Award recognizing it
as the best collegiate newspaper in the nation. Our Student
American Advertising Federation competition finished in
fourth-place at the Regional AAF competition; we have finished
in the top four for six consecutive years.
People
Our alumni, faculty, and staff continue to
accomplish wonderful things. Former faculty, debaters, and Kentucky
Kernel staffers, as well as alumni, were very well
represented among the 20 inductees into the UK Hall of
Distinguished Alumni this last May: Sam Abell, David
Dick, W. James Host, Paul Chellgren, and Constantine
Curris. Robert E. Miller has recently completed his
term as President of UK's Alumni Association.
Former Dean Doug Boyd continues his
service as the Director of the Office of International Affairs.
Dr. James Applegate will be on loan as Acting
Vice-President for Academic Affairs at the Council on
Post-Secondary Education. Dr. Thomas Lindlof has begun
his term as Editor of the prestigious Journal of Broadcasting
and Electronic Media. Professor Roy Moore has
completed two terms as Senate Council Chair. Professor Richard
Labunski's book The Second Constitutional Convention
has been well received. Dr. Derek Lane was one of six UK
professors selected to receive the 2000 Alumni Great Teacher
award. We welcome one new junior faculty member this year,
Professor Jackie White, while we also celebrated the
career of our recent retiree Professor Robert Bostrom who
had served UK for three decades.
Graduate Programs
Our School of Library and Information Science
provides critical service to the Commonwealth as a leader in
distance learning and is its sole source of trained librarians.
They have launched four new internet courses and will be
offering courses in Ashland. They graduated 99 students with
degrees in library science this last year.
Our doctoral program continues its excellent
placement of our graduates with former students currently
working for the AMC Cancer Research Center in Denver and
Porter-Novelli a public relations and social marketing firm, and
others receiving more traditional university placements at the
University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Arizona State
University-West, and Georgia State University.
The doctoral program was one of four in the
country selected for a National Communication Association
Preparing Future Faculty Grant. The other schools were Indiana
University, University of New Mexico, and Howard University.
Research
Many of our current graduate and research
programs have already been identified as achieving Top Twenty
status, largely because of the success of our cohort of health
communication researchers in attracting $25,000,000 in outside
research funding over the last decade. This research has
resulted in important national policy changes in how we deliver
drug abuse prevention messages to adolescents. Largely to
accommodate the research programs of Dr. Rick Zimmerman,
we have added an 1800 square foot research suite in Breckinridge
Hall. Dr. Susan Morgan has received nearly a million
dollars over the last year to support her various health
communication research projects. Reflecting our national status
in this area we hosted 100 leading researchers in April for the
Kentucky Conference on Health Communication. Dr. Ling Hwey
Jeng received a national leadership grant from the Institute
of Museum and Library and Information Sciences to study
information seeking in interdisciplinary research.
Development
As you can see, securing resources and attaining
excellence go hand-in-hand for the 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. Janice Birdwhistell, our
Development Officer, will be instrumental in helping us raise
our level of private giving.
We were delighted over the last year to have
several endowments created that benefit our students and
programs, most notably: the Jeremy Michael Streck Memorial
Scholarship Fund, the J. A. McCauley Fund for Academic
Excellence and the R. Lewis Donohew Graduate Fellowship
Fund. The Scripps Howard Foundation also continued
its generous support of our School of Journalism and
Telecommunications. We are looking forward to the first Bowling
Executive-in-Residence lecture on October 19th featuring Mr. Harold
Burson which was funded largely by a contribution from Mr. Joseph
Cullman. Jack Guthrie is spearheading a campaign to
raise matching funds for this program that will also include
student scholarships.
First Annual College Recognition Ceremony and Dinner
Earlier this month over 70 alumni, friends,
staff, faculty, and students celebrated with the college award
winners, with recognition given to:
- Outstanding Alumnus - Jack Guthrie
- Friend of the College - Rosemary Westley
- Outstanding Staff Member - Steven Ingram
- Excellence in Teaching Award - Joe Miller
- Faculty Research Award - Phillip Palmgreen
- Faculty Community Service Award - Scoobie Ryan and Roy
Moore
We hope you will able to join us next fall for this dinner which
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
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