By the Numbers: Aim 4: Embrace and protect the ethical pursuit of truth to uphold democracy

Summary of Activities

On April 7, 2023, the college faculty approved a permanent number and ACE 6 certification for JOMC 322: Democracy and the Media: Trusting the News in a Hyper-polarized Era. This course has been previously offered as a special topics course. The new permanent ACE status will allow the college to attract students from across the campus to enroll in future semesters.

The college also approved a new requirement, JOUR 107: Information Gathering, for all journalism majors on December 7, 2023.  This course is open to students across campus and will benefit college enrollment. The course also meets the JOUR 107: Information Gathering requirement for journalism majors.

The college hosted a panel discussion with professionals-in-residence and faculty during the Media, Ethics and Society course on March 9, 2023. Three PIRs participated, including Randy Hawthorne, product manager at Nelnet, Austin Pistulka, production director and radio host at the Rural Radio Network and DeWayne Taylor, radio host at NRG media. They joined three faculty members, Lecturer Bill Doleman, Assistant Professor of Practice Jemalyn Griffin and Professor Barney McCoy, in the discussion.

During 2022-2023, the Strategic Planning Committee collected the professional ethics standards issued by the various professional associations aligned with the college’s disciplines. These standards will serve as the basis for ethics education in the college. In the spring of 2023, Dean Veil met with Professor Rick Alloway to discuss creating modules on major-specific standards for the required Media, Ethics and Society course.

The college officially established a Nebraska Chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists in the fall of 2022. An informational meeting was held in April 2022. Interested students elected the first class of officers and submitted the required paperwork to establish the group as an official Registered Student Organization in the fall. The inaugural president was senior journalism and political science major Zach Wendling and the faculty advisor was Assistant Professor or Practice Jill Martin.

Five faculty served as faculty fellows with the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center during 2022-2023, including Professor Frauke Hachtmann, Associate Professor Valerie Jones, Professor Laurie Lee, Professor Barney McCoy and Associate Professor Bryan Wang. Unfortunately, the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center ceased operations at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year, so there will be no future engagement.

The College continued posting at an increased level on the Nebraska News Service website. Between 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, the college saw a 43% increase in posts, growing from 443 to 633. The college maintained the increased posting levels in 2022-2023, with a total of 636 posts to the site. However, the number of posts tagged as multimedia content declined from 80 in 2021-2022 to 36 in 2022-2023.

The college did not offer a depth reporting course during 2022-2023. However, the college did complete two hires for Deepe Chairs in Depth Reporting. These positions will begin in August 2023 and be supported by the Deepe Family Endowed Chair in Depth Reporting Fund. The two faculty hires are Assistant Professor Linda White and Assistant Professor of Practice Chris Graves (internal hire).

Review of the Targets

Our enrollment in ACE courses decreases slightly. The addition of another ACE-certified course, as detailed above, should improve this number in future years.

The college will continue to work on including ethics modules in the 2022-2023 academic year based upon the groundwork laid in 2022-2023.

The number of syllabi containing ethics assignments, discussions or activities is quite low. This is likely due to two factors. First, most faculty are likely unaware of the need to include these in their courses. We've focused on indicating where DEI is addressed in each class, but with a dedicated ethics class already required, we weren't as concerned with showing where else ethics discussions take place in the curriculum. Second, we do not require that discussions, activities or assignments be included in syllabi. Most classes include ethics as a learning outcome, providing this number may be a bettter assessment of this goal.[SV3] [HH4] A review or our assessment data required for our accreditation self-study indicates that ethics is not an area of concern for the college. The strategic planning committee will review this metric during the 2023-2024 academic year.

Review of Strategies