Phyllis Larsen was named a “CASE District Faculty Star” in the September issue of the national magazine of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education for ranking in the top 10 percent of all conference speakers. Conference participants rank speakers on criteria of knowledge of subject matter, suitability of content, presentation skills and quality of handouts. The ranking was based on evaluations of Larsen’s conference presentation on media relations training programs at the January 2001 CASE District VI conference.
Larsen was also appointed to the UNL Teaching Council and conducted a media training seminar for the dean, chairs and directors of UNL’s College of Arts and Sciences. She led a summer reading program discussion group for freshmen in the Honors Program or University Foundations.
Meg Lauerman was named director of university communications for UNL on July 9. She is in charge of all of UNL’s public relations, media relations, marketing and advertising efforts.
Lauerman had been an assistant professor of advertising in the J school since 1996. In July 2000 she began a two-year appointment as special assistant to the chancellor for institutional marketing. Her previous work experiences include marketing and public relations work at State Farm Insurance Co. and Lincoln Public Schools as well as production supervision at Nebraska Educational Television.
Nancy Mitchell and Jerry Renaud (broadcasting faculty) wrote an article, “Building a Learning Community for Journalism and Mass Communica-tions: The Nebraska Experience,” which appears in the Fall 2001 issue of the Journalism and Mass Communication Educator.
Mitchell also had a piece published in a special journal for AEJMC (Association for Education in Journal-ism and Mass Communication): “You Decide What’s Right: Integrating Ethical Decision-Making for Mass Media,” Summer 2001.
Mitchell will serve a three-year term as a member of the editorial review board for Journalism and Mass Communication Educator. She will represent the UNL campus at a November meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Greater Expectations Consortium on Quality Education. She also serves on the universitywide institutional identity committee.
Bill Vobejda presented at the AEJMC Ad Division teaching workshop in Washington, D.C., in August. The topic of the presentation was how to integrate advertising research, theory and practice into existing courses. He currently chairs an AEJMC Ad Division task force on creating electronic syllabi and case study exchange for the division. He also is a member of the Daily Nebraskan Publications Board and is adviser to the college Student Advisory Board.
Broadcasting
Laurie Thomas Lee presented a paper at the National Cable Television Association Academic Seminar in Chicago in June. Her paper was on “Internet Disclosures: The Cable Communications Policy Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in Conflict.” She also presented a paper at the annual AEJMC convention in Washington, D.C., in August. That paper was titled “Can Police Track Your Wireless Calls? Call Location Information and Privacy Law.”
Lee also became a newly-appointed board member of Bright Lights, a non-profit organization for summer youth enrichment courses.
Peter Mayeux formed and moderated a panel at the American Journalism Historians Association annual conference in San Diego Oct. 3-8. The panel topic was “American Isolationism and Attitudes of Regional Presses.” Two NU alumni, Christopher Harper, now at Ithaca College in New York, and Mike Sweeney, now teaching at Utah State University, presented papers for this panel. At the same conference, Mayeux presented a research-in-progress report titled, “Todd Storz: New Dimensions of a Radio Pioneer’s Influence.”
By January 2002, Mayeux will have completed for the Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly a book review of “Philo T. Farnsworth: the Father of Television,” by Donald G. Godfrey from Arizona State University. He also reviewed the first few chapters of a new mass media introduction textbook that Houghton Mifflin Company is considering for release next year.
Larry Walklin made a presentation Oct. 10 to the UNL Teaching and Learning Center about advising the student at a distance.
News-editorial
Charlyne Berens served as director of the Dow Jones Editing Residency May 20 through June 1. Twelve journalism students from colleges across the nation attended for two weeks of intensive editing instruction before serving as interns on daily newspaper copy desks during the summer.
Berens is doing research for a book about the Nebraska Unicameral Legislature, under contract to the University of Nebraska Press, and serves as the college’s learning community coordinator and honors program coordinator this fall.
Joe Starita supervised overall editorial content for “Reflections on the Little Bighorn,” a 76-page, full-color magazine produced by the spring depth reporting class. He attended the National Hearst Contest finals in San Francisco, where Brian Carlson, a depth reporting student, took first place.
He also spent 16 days in Cuba and wrote a lengthy piece for the Lincoln Journal Star on the island nation’s people, government, economy and culture. He delivered a two-hour lecture to two dozen Nebraska public school teachers for the Nebraska Institute and gave a one-hour talk to the Downtown Lincoln Optimists Club on the cultural differences between Indian and white cultures.
He is writing a new forward to “The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge,” which the University of Nebraska Press will bring out this spring in a Bison Books edition and is gathering interviews and research for a proposed book about the 1879 trial of Ponca Chief Standing Bear. He is also researching a book/photo project on the history and cultural significance of pow-wows among Northern Plains Indian tribes.
George Tuck had his photos of the Great Plains on exhibit in Bad Segeberg, Germany, during the summer. Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns participated in a ceremony opening the exhibit in late June.
The exhibit will be shown at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas, beginning in January 2002.