unljnews

Rick Alloway hosted two sessions on academic success as part of the Admissions Office “Power Up” weekend for incoming freshmen in August 2009.

Alloway became the regular host of a quarterly radio call-in show with Sen. Ben Nelson, sponsored by the Nebraska Broadcasters Association. The December show was contentious, coming just two days after Nelson’s controversial vote on the health care issue; the March show was even more contentious, on the heals of the congressional health care reform vote.

Alloway is the faculty sponsor for The Friends of KRNU, a Recognized Student Organization, and oversaw the recertification of this dormant student group as part of the outreach and branding effort for KRNU. He was one of the college’s faculty members receiving recognition in January from the UNL Parents Association for contributions to students.

Alloway was a member of the search committee to find a new dean for the J school. He also is a  member of the search committee for the UNL senior vice chancellor for academic affairs.

He served as master of ceremonies for the following events: the university’s annual Employee Service Awards recognition event in September; a LAFTA concert on Dec. 5 featuring nationally known a cappella group The Bobs and local act No Better Cause; Lincoln Southeast High School’s inaugural Athletic Hall of Fame banquet; both the J Days Honors Convocation and the alumni awards luncheon.

Tim Anderson continued to head the journalism sequence and shepherd the curriculum changes. He also continued to work on his biography of John Neihardt and reviewed a new book, Jedediah Smith: No Ordinary Mountain Man, by Barton H. Barbour for the fall 2009 issue of South Dakota History magazine.

Ruth Brown is in the second year of her two-year term as president of Nebraska Press Women (NPW). She presided over the group’s fall convention in Gothenburg as well as the spring convention in Lincoln, which she coordinated. NPW is making plans to establish a Women Journalists Hall of Fame, which will be housed at the J school. Brown and NPW are creating a line of notecards and apparel based on the work of Marianne Beel, Sandhills photographer, to fund a permanent scholarship in her name. Brown is working with other Nebraska and Iowa Press Women to co-host the National Federation of Press Women convention in 2011.

Brown is a member of the NET Foundation board of directors and is on the West District Campaign Leadership Team. As such, she organized a cultivation event in Dawson County, getting area Husker football walk-ons to talk about the experience following a screening of the NET “Walk-Ons” documentary.

Brown’s grant application to Extended Education and Outreach for a new course in Digital Insight and Analytics was funded, and she will help in its development. She also chaired committees to develop a business concentration and to update the course evaluation instrument and process.

Sue Burzynski Bullard organized a conference on Journalism Ethics and New Technology in November.  The one-day workshop attracted more than 150 students, faculty and professionals from across Nebraska. She also shepherded six students to the American Copy Editors Society (ACES) regional conference at Columbia, Mo., in October and accompanied six others to the national conference in Philadelphia in April, where she was elected to the national ACES executive board.  In the fall, she also arranged for a videoconference chat on finding internships for about a dozen ACES students (and others) with the Poynter Institute’s Ask the Recruiter, Joe Grimm.

She is organizing the ACES regional conference that will be held at the J school on Oct. 9. She also was awarded a U Care grant for next year to hire a student to help with research on a beginning editing textbook that she is writing.

Trina Creighton was awarded a $10,000 grant to research the impact violence has on the dropout rate in Omaha. She presented her documentary “The Academic Achievement Gap” to the Nebraska Press Women annual convention in Lincoln. (It has been shown 80 times.) She spoke at UNO about African Americans in the media.

Creighton was a member of the search committee to find a new dean for the J school and represented the college at the Big Red Road Show in Omaha. She spoke to student visitors from Norris Junior/Senior High School and to leadership classes on East Campus.

She also created a mentoring program for broadcast graduates and graduating students, and she mentors students in Omaha’s Bright Future Foundation. She hosted NETV’s film festival at the Ross Film Theatre in Lincoln and the Girls Club in Omaha.

Mary Garbacz and the Strategic Discussions for Nebraska team are working on a series of four annual magazines called Opportunities for Nebraska. The magazines will explain the research of University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty that’s intended to improve the land and lives of Nebraskans and of people in other states and countries. The Strategic Discussions for Nebraska team is also conducting its own research, collaborating with Dr. Linda Shipley and students in the graduate research courses, about how information is obtained and shared in Nebraska communities. The goal of the research is to share research findings with the communities in an effort to promote more effective internal and external communication.

Mike Goff, the college’s chief adviser, met with 460 students during the course of the first semester to plan schedules, discuss degree programs and stay on track for timely graduation.

Goff led his Research and Accounting Planning class in a project for local business Agile Sports, creators of the Web-based software used by the Huskers to review game film with coaches’ comments inserted. Students conducted research and created advertising materials that the client plans to use.

Frauke Hachtmann graduated with a Ph.D. in educational studies in May. Her dissertation, “General Education Reform from a Faculty Perspective at a Research-Extensive University: A Grounded Theory Approach,” investigated the process that developed UNL’s recent “Achievement-Centered Education” (ACE) program.

During the summer pre-session she led a new study abroad program to Japan for a cross-listed Advertising and Art Studio course titled “Japanese Visual Culture in Context.” The course was certified for two ACE student learning outcomes. Eighteen students and two instructors visited Kyoto and Tokyo to learn about Japanese culture and how it manifests itself in fine art as well as advertising.

Hachtmann recently received a $50,000 grant from Online Worldwide to develop a new master’s specialization in “Professional Advertising and Public Relations.” The new program will be offered jointly with the College of Business and Technology and the College of Fine Arts and Humanities at UNK in the near future. In addition, she received a $5,000 grant from Extended Education and Outreach to convert a traditional face-to-face graduate-level research course into an asynchronous distance course that will be part of the new online specialization.

She continues to serve on the executive committee of AEJMC’s Advertising Division, for which she chaired this year’s special topics competitive paper competition. Along with Nancy Mitchell and Linda Shipley, she published an article, “Adding Bilateral Transparency to Assessing Student Learning in the Advertising Capstone Course,” in the Journal of Advertising Education.

Michelle Carr Hassler is serving as the summer faculty adviser for the ABC on Campus bureau and is working with three students — Carson Stokebrand, Wade Hilligoss and Morgan Demmel. UNL is one of six journalism schools participating in the ABC News program, which gives students the opportunity to work with and learn from national broadcast news professionals.

Hassler is in her second year as the college’s coordinator for the News21 program, a national fellowship in which students from 12 journalism schools produce in-depth news coverage on critical issues facing the nation and then experiment with innovative digital methods to distribute the news on multiple platforms. CoJMC annually selects three fellows to participate in the program, which is part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative for the Future of Journalism Education.

In February, she was among a group of CoJMC faculty and students who attended “A Way Forward: Solving the Challenges of the News Frontier,” a summit for journalism educators presented in February by Carnegie Corporation of New York and The Paley Center for Media in New York City.  She spoke about the issues raised in the journalism summit during a luncheon address at the Nebraska Press Women’s spring convention on May 1 in Lincoln.

Stacy James led a group of undergraduate and graduate students known as the “KRNU E-Squad” to execute some of the campaigns tactics her summer class had developed for the launch of the college’s new 90.3 KRNU. The students’ work included outdoor boards all over Lincoln, a coupon book that the team “sold” and designed, and publicity in the Lincoln area and campus publications.

James’ capstone Campaigns class in the fall of 2009 worked with the Nebraska Press Association; students developed concepts to help convey the reality that community newspapers in Nebraska are alive and doing well and are still a great way for advertisers to reach their customers. One of the campaigns created by a team called “The Newsies” was launched at the spring NPA convention. The campaign highlighted the strength of Nebraska’s community newspapers with a campaign titled “Proven in the Past. Ready for the Future.”

UNL senior ad major Allison Leapley submitted the winning logo design for National Newspaper Association’s 2010 Annual Convention and Trade Show in Omaha in the fall of 2010. The design will be incorporated into all of the national convention’s materials and website.

In the spring of 2010, James’ Campaigns class worked with the new Nebraska State Fair to develop two different plans for the 2011 event at the end of August in Grand Island. The teams were invited to present their campaigns to the State Fair Board in Grand Island in May 2010.

James’ national service for AEJMC continues; she produced and published the 54-page fall 2009 and spring 2010 editions of the Journal of Advertising Education for AEJMC Ad Division and produced and published an 8-page print AdNews newsletter for the AEJMC Ad Division. In the fall of 2009, the newsletter went digital and is now electronically delivered to almost 400 Ad Division members throughout the world.

Carolyn Johnsen joined Amy Struthers on a trip to Kansas City to do some preliminary work with UNL College of Agriculture and Natural Resources scientists as well as those from six other land grant universities in the U.S. for a report the college’s students will write on 30 years of work by INTSORMIL:  the International Sorghum and Millet Collaborative Research Support Program.

Seven students in Johnson’s science-writing class in the spring semester wrote stories describing this work, and four of the students traveled to participating land-grant universities to write profiles of scientists and graduate students working on the project. In May, Johnsen and three of the students traveled to Africa to report on related work there and on the farmers who are using the seeds.

Johnsen has edited a new book, “Taking Science to the People:  A Communication Primer for Scientists and Engineers,” to be published by the University of Nebraska Press in the fall.  And the depth report she and Joe Starita supervised — “Ethanol:  Salvation or Damnation?” — won first place for best student reporting on the environment from the Society of Environmental Journalists at the group’s annual conference in Madison, Wis., in October.

Phyllis Larsen continues to advise the UNL chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), which last fall had record membership numbers with a 50 percent increase from last year. The club created a media campaign, which won top honors (an Award of Excellence) at the Nebraska Public Relations Society of America Paper Anvil Awards in December. The club also has record numbers participating in their mentoring program this year, a program that includes students from all CoJMC majors. Each student is matched 1-to-1 for the academic year with a communication professional in the student’s interest area. Many of the mentors are CoJMC alumni, which helps keep top professionals linked to the college.

Larsen also created and taught two public relations seminars for the college’s new One Day University professional development series. During the summer pre-session, she led the college’s first study abroad class to Costa Rica. In service to the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, Larsen was a reviewer for the PR Division’s research paper competition for the 2010 summer conference.

Laurie Thomas Lee was on leave to work on a book during fall semester. In November she became president of the board of directors for Bright Lights, and she was reappointed to the Cable Advisory Board for a three-year term.

Lee gave a panel presentation at the Broadcast Education Association annual convention in Las Vegas on “Changes in Privacy Law.” She also produced and presented a video on “Censored Movies” at a “Banned Books Week” public event celebrating the First Amendment. She helped co-chair the event sponsored by the Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska and ACLU Nebraska.

Lee was also the faculty adviser of the UNL chapter of the National Broadcasting Society, which won the grand prize for chapter website, honorable mention for instructional/industrial production and honorable mention for video magazine program (“Fast Forward”) at the national convention in Dallas.

Barney McCoy shared Award of Excellence honors with colleague Bruce Mitchell in the Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of Media Arts 2010 competition. McCoy was recognized as producer of the documentary “Exploring the Wild Kingdom.” Mitchell was videographer/editor on the documentary about Nebraska native Don Meier, creator of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom television series. “Exploring the Wild Kingdom” has been broadcast numerous times on NET, Nebraska public television and Chicago public television station WTTW.

McCoy is currently working on a documentary about the changes Kosovo has gone through since declaring independence in 2008. Another documentary, “They Could Really Play the Game,” was broadcast by Athens, Ohio, public television station WOUB. McCoy directed, wrote and produced the documentary on the 1952-54 Rio Grande College basketball team that smashed NCAA and NAIA scoring records while saving the school from bankruptcy.

McCoy lectured, taught and served as editor for a multi-media journalism course at the Kosovo Institute of Journalism and Communications. He co-authored, with UNL educational psychology professor John Creswell, a chapter in a book on emergent technologies. The book will be published by the Oxford Press in early 2011.

McCoy served as professional researcher and writer on travel, business and science articles published on the Answerbag.com and eHow.com websites. Combined, the two information websites draw more than 70 million visitors each month. Three students McCoy supervised placed in the top 10 nationally in the William Randolph Hearst Journalism Awards, and one student, Brandi Kruse, was the overall winner in the broadcast division finals.

Bruce Mitchell continued working with materials collected and created during his summer 2009 trip to Zambia, part of the Omaha Science Media Project, which aims to educate teens about viruses, including HIV/AIDS, using Omaha Public Schools high school students in a pilot program. Mitchell is producing videos for classroom use based on interviews with Zambian teens whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS.

He also exhibited his photos at the City Union’s Rotunda Gallery, the Van Brunt Visitor’s Center and the Nebraska Center for Virology, located on East Campus in the Morrison Center.

Nancy Mitchell’s capstone campaigns class competed in a national EdVenture Partners contest to develop an effective campaign to promote the new Honda Insight to the college market. The team finished among the top 10.

Mitchell and CoJMC faculty member Charlyne Berens had a paper, “Parallel Tracks, Same Terminus: The Role of Nineteenth-Century Newspapers and Railroads in the Settlement of Nebraska,” published in the Fall 2009 Great Plains Quarterly.

Mitchell is working on revisions for the ninth edition of “Advertising Principles and Practices,” a textbook she co-authors with Sandra Moriarty and William Wells.

Luis Peon-Casanova, program of excellence professor of visual literacy, developed new modules for the online component of the program, about visual literacy issues particular to media. He continues to represent CoJMC in the campus-wide Visual Literacy Consortium. In spring, he and faculty member Carla Kimbrough taught the first semester of a two-semester class about Bolivia, the only nation in South America whose government is led by indigenous people. They traveled to Bolivia with the class in June.

Mary Kay Quinlan presented an oral history workshop at a joint meeting of the Midwest Association of Museums and the Minnesota Museums Association in St. Paul, Minn.

Joe Starita continued to travel and speak on behalf of Standing Bear, subject of his book, I Am a Man. Starita has given more than 50 presentations about the Native chief.

Amy Struthers and faculty colleague Carolyn Johnson were awarded a $200,000 grant by the International Sorghum and Millet Collaborative Research Support Program (INTSORMIL CRSP) to report on and raise awareness of the group’s 30 years of USAID-funded work.

Struthers continues to serve on the executive board of AAF Lincoln and to advise the college’s Student Ad Club, the campus AAF chapter.

Struthers was invited to contribute to a forthcoming book, Essentials of Public Health Communication and Informatics, to be published 2010 by Jones and Bartlett. Her chapter contribution describes the Whatcha doin? campaign, an on-going buzz marketing campaign in partnership with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, that promotes increased fruit and vegetable consumption and physical activity to teens in 15 high schools around the state.

Struthers worked with the City of Lincoln Public Works and Utilities to establish an internship program, providing a CoJMC student each year with a paid position to develop materials raising visibility of the department’s work and accomplishments.

Bruce Thorson was a panelist for “Getting Students Out of Their Comfort Zones” at the AEJMC convention in August 2009 in Boston. He organized and coordinated a multimedia seminar at the college in September, supported by Canon, Apple and the Poynter Institute. He gave a photojournalism presentation to the Nebraska High School Press Association in October, one to Lincoln High School journalism students in November and another to the photo club at Lincoln’s Berean Church in November.

He finished overseeing the layout, design and publication of the photo book from the in-depth photo project on Kosovo and of a similar book from the in-depth photo project on South Africa.

The opening of Part One of “Searching for the Real Nebraska,” a photo documentary project he did this last summer, took place on Nov. 6 at the Great Plains Art Museum, setting an attendance record for an opening night reception; Part Two opened on Jan. 5. Part One also was exhibited at Hastings College Feb. 8 to 28 and at the Sioux City Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and adjoining Betty Strong Encounter Center during late summer.

Sriyani Tidball helped to conceptualize and organize the Human Trafficking Conference, the first of its kind, bringing more than 125 people to the UNL campus last October. Students in her classes developed materials for an exhibition at the conference, reflecting concepts for promoting awareness of the issues of human trafficking.

Tidball’s students also worked with the Special Olympics 2010 National Games Committee to create campaign materials for increasing awareness of the event and increase the number of local volunteers.

Tidball received the Martin Luther King, Jr., Award in January for her contributions to civil rights. (See story elsewhere in this publication.)

Adam Wagler is developing a course for the spring 2011 semester about mobile communications and social media. Wagler presented three different sessions for faculty about Web design:  HTML and CSS training and web technologies.

Wagler led two workshops for the Nebraska High School Press Association (NHSPA) conference and is working with NHSPA to develop an online submission process for their contest. He also served as a judge for the NHSPA state finals.

He also continues to be a key member of the Omaha Science Media Project, funded by a $1.8 million grant; his work currently includes editing videos from the summer workshop with OPS students, managing the second year budget and guiding two graduate students and one undergraduate student on multiple projects for the grant, including a documentary video of the summer workshop and the project’s website, www.omahasciencemediaproject.org.

Wagler is part of the Minority Health-Related Grant, “Delivering Health Science to Diverse Teens by Cell Phone,” a $75,000 UNL grant. Wagler is part of a team developing an iPhone game and is producing marketing ideas for the project.

He also continues work on the multiyear NIH grant, “World of Viruses,” which this fall was awarded a $200,000 supplemental grant to support development of an online and mobile presence for the interdisciplinary project focused on virology education for the general public.

Wagler also led a small group of graduate students who developed a website for the Special Olympics. The website will be used by UNL students enrolled in summer classes to post coverage of the Special Olympic athletes from across America who will be in Lincoln in late July to compete in the 2010 USA National Games. The video, photos and words can be found on this site: http://cojmc.unl.edu/specialolympics

Joe Weber, who joined the college in fall 2009, developed a magazine-writing class and the print portion of a multi-media reporting class. He helped a student in that magazine-writing class get his story published in the Lincoln Journal Star. He also began work on a course in business and economic journalism the college will offer in 2010-11 and worked with colleague Ruth Brown to develop a business concentration. He also discussed small business development with high school students in the LPS Entrepreneurship Focus Program. And he is taking part in a university training program that involves seeking a grant for a book project.

Phil Willet was awarded a $5,000 Extended Education and Outreach grant for new curriculum development to develop Advertising Management (ADVT 484/884) as an online course.

Willet led this year’s National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) team that developed a campaign for State Farm Insurance. The team won the district competition in St. Louis in April and placed in the top four at the national competition in Orlando. NSAC is the country’s premier advertising competition, sponsored by the American Advertising Federation (AAF). The team is generously support by the Rich Bailey Fund.

Willet also is adviser to the campus’s new Social Media Club, which launched last fall.

Scott Winter, ably assisted by the JAMbassadors and six other professors, organized the first Lincoln Area High School Journalism Workshop. He had an article accepted for publication in Communication: Journalism Education Today, the national magazine for high school journalism teachers. He was the featured speaker for three seminars at the fall convention of the Texas Association of Journalism Educators in San Antonio.

As part of his recruiting visits, he taught journalism classes in Lincoln, Elkhorn, Minneapolis-St. Paul area schools and others. Winter traveled to Kosovo to teach at the Kosovo Institute of Journalism and Communications for two weeks in March. He also helped build contact for kosovotwopointzero.com, a new social networking site for the emerging democracy. Winter also had a paper accepted by the Florida Review.

Also, working with Joe Starita, Winter helped with projects at the Omaha Reservation and at an admission conference at UNL.