Executive Vice President, Rubber City Radio Group (WAKR/WONE/WQMX Radio) and the Mid Michigan Radio Group, Lansing, MI. Mark combines 35 years of broadcast sales/management experience with over a decade in the classroom as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Akron, Mount Union College, Youngstown State University and at Kent State University where he earned the M.A. degree from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Biviano, an active professional musician, serves as the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Summit County Salvation Army and also sits on the Board of Directors of the Summit County Red Cross. He also is an advisor and an instructor at the Ohio Center for Broadcasting. Mark recently completed service as a trustee of the Cleveland-based Fairport Mutual Funds.

John Bowen

John has taught courses for prospective high school teachers at Kent JMC as an adjunct since 1984, although he has done so more regularly since his retirement after 33 years of teaching high school journalism.

He holds a BS in Education and an M.A. in Journalism from Kent State University. He currently teaches Newswriting, Media Information Gathering and Teaching High School Journalism in the 21st Century, an online course, and is involved with the development of an online master’s program in Kent State’s Center for Scholastic Journalism.

His academic resume includes 1983 Dow Jones Newspaper Fund National Journalism Teacher of the Year; Gold Key, Columbia Scholastic Press Association; Pioneer Award, National Scholastic Press Association; Master Journalism Educator, JEA; Carl Towley Award, JEA; Ohio Educational Language and Media Association Intellectual Freedom Award.

Bowen is a lead instructor at the ASNE High School Journalism Institute at Kent State and at various summer journalism workshops. He currently is a board member and chair of the Scholastic Press Rights Commission for the Journalism Education Association and conveener of the Student Press law Center’s Advisory Council.

Albert E. Fitzpatrick

Al, former Knight Ridder executive and editor, has been a Journalism Adjunct Professor at Kent State for 16 years. He was an Associate Professor and Senior Fellow at Medill at Northwestern and was Interim Chair of the Journalism Department at Howard University. Fitzpatrick directed the Beacon Journal's Pulitizer Prize coverage of the Kent State disturbance in 1970. He received Kent State's Outstanding Alumnus Award in Journalism in 1973. He is the recipient of numerous other honors including the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells Awards, American Journalism Historical Association and National Press Foundation Awards for lifetime contributions to journalism. Also, he received Kent State's Robert B. McGruder Distinguished Lecture Award for his work in diversity. Fitzpatrick was inducted into NABJ's Hall of Fame at the Annual Convention in Indianapolis on Aug. 18, 2006. He is a 1956 Kent State graduate.

Steve McKeown

Associate Creative Director, Brokaw. As the most award-winning art director in the region, Steve has won Best of Show in the Cleveland Advertising Association’s ADDY Awards 6 times in eight years, he’s won numerous national ADDYs, two ATHENA Awards, and was a finalist in last year’s Radio Mercury Awards. On top of that, his work has been featured in the prestigious One Show, Communication Arts Advertising Annual, Print magazine’s Regional Design Annual, Adweek, Brandweek, Creativity, Adcritic.com and in the world’s most respected creative showcases the Art Director’s Annual, Communication Arts and The One Club.
Steve has been with Brokaw since 1994. Prior to that, he worked with design studios in both Cleveland and Cincinnati, on such accounts as Kroger Foods and Chiquita. He holds a bachelor of fine arts from the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati. He and Brokaw Managing Partner Greg Thomas created and co-teach the Advanced Advertising Copywriting class, which helps students develop concepting skills and build their portfolios. Work from students in the course has been featured in CMYK magazine.

David A. Meeker

Dave is the retired executive vice president of Edward Howard & Co., the nation’s oldest independent public relations counseling firm, and remains Of Counsel to the firm.

Meeker’s professional experience includes corporate public relations positions with The General Tire & Rubber Company and the Eastman Kodak Company. He has worked as a journalist for the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier, the Akron Beacon Journal and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He holds a master’s degree in communication management from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Kent State.
Meeker is past chairman the College of Fellows of the Public Relations Society of America. His work has been honored five times with the Silver Anvil, PRSA’s highest national award. He and his wife, Anita, live in Akron.

Ron Russo

Ron Russo, adjunct professor of film, is in his ninth year of teaching at KSU. Though trained in international cinema (Rossellini/Hitchcock, etc.) he has branched out into film comedy and Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. His new textbook Adult Swim and Comedy, 2005 melds all three of the aforementioned areas.

Greg Thomas

Partner, General Manager, Brokaw. Before joining Brokaw, Greg spent more than a decade as a copywriter with national and regional agencies such as Lowe Marschalk; Fahlgren Martin; and Hitchcock, Fleming & Associates. He served as creative director at Brokaw for eight years, during which time Brokaw’s creative department won more creative recognition than any other agency in the region, appearing in The Communication Arts Advertising Annual, the Art Director’s Annual, the One Show, the ATHENAs, Adcritic.com, Print magazine’s regional Design Annual, Adweek, Brandweek, Creativity and the National ADDYs, as well as dominating the local ADDYs. He has also served as a judge in the Fort Wayne and Indianapolis ADDYs. As general manager, Greg drives—and is intimately involved in—all of the day-to-day operations of the agency, ensuring that Brokaw’s work remains of the highest quality. Over the course of his career, Greg has worked on a wide variety of accounts, including BP America, McDonald’s, Ohio Bell/Ameritech, Warner Cable, and Goodyear Tire & Rubber. He holds bachelor’s degrees in English and Education from Kent State University. Greg has been an adjunct instructor at Kent State since 2002. He and Brokaw Associate Creative Director Steve McKeown created and co-teach the Advanced Advertising Copywriting course, which helps students develop concepting skills and build their portfolios. Work from students in the course has been featured in CMYK magazine.

Davis Young

Davis served for many years as President of the multi-office public relations firm Edward Howard & Co. He received the Best of Silver Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) for the single finest program of the year nationally. He is author of Building Your Company’s Good Name published by AMACOM, American Management Association. He is also past chairman of the PRSA Counselors Academy that represents public relations counselors in the United States and a number of foreign countries. He is a journalism graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Gary Harwood

Gary has been a photographer for Kent State for more than 22 years and chief photographer since 1987. He has won four national Circle of Excellence awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and was named the 2001 University Photographers Association of America’s Photographer of the Year. His work has appeared in national publications. He was awarded the 2006 Ohio News Photographers Association’s James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award for a multi-image photo essay. Gary was selected as instructor for the Unseen Cleveland photography project. He lives in Kent with his wife, Carole. He’s a graduate of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.