Dear Alumni and Friends,
We have reached the end of an era. Three of our most prominent and beloved faculty have announced they will retire at the end of the semester. Over the last 20 years, Joe Starita, Amy Struthers and Trina Creighton have been pillars of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications and impacted the lives of thousands of students. This newsletter features a story on Joe Starita’s incredible career. We will feature stories on Amy Struthers in May and Trina Creighton in June. Please share your stories and well wishes with Joe, Amy and Trina by clicking on the links below.
This month’s newsletter is full of stories on our amazing faculty. Professor Matt Waite is using machine learning to predict the outcome of March Madness brackets in his sports data analytics class, Associate Professor Joe Weber published a book on the lure of extremism, Assistant Professor Jenn Sheppard has a second career as a sponsored dirt bike racer and several faculty earned grants, published research and won awards noted in this rundown of faculty accomplishments.
Our students are also strutting their stuff by making it to the finals in the Bateman Case Study Competition, placing second in the District 9 National Student Adverting Competition, and winning awards and scholarships from the Society of Professional Journalism, Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association, Omaha Press Club and all across campus.
We greatly appreciate our successful alumni and industry partners who advise and encourage our students. Thank you to everyone who met via Zoom with our graduating seniors over the last couple weeks. We also were proud to have Omaha World Herald Executive Editor Randy Essex as our featured speaker at the Seline Lecture, and Kauffman Foundation CEO Wendy Guillies teach a master class for Jacht.
Alumni are invited to join us on May 12, from 1-3 p.m. via Zoom, for an Accountability Journalism Workshop. CEO of A Picture’s Worth Elissa Yancy and freelance journalist Alexis Wray will lead the workshop on practical guidance for challenging bias and developing approaches to richer, deeper storytelling. Please register here.
If you have ideas for workshops or other opportunities to bring our students and alumni together, please do send them my way. I would love to hear from you!
Go Big Red!
Shari