Position Description, Call for Applications: Knight Chair in Scholastic Journalism

Position Descripton

The Knight Chair in Scholastic Journalism will be a dedicated media professional with a record of advocacy for student journalists and a passion for the First Amendment. He or she must be able to persuade others of the vital role scholastic journalism can play in a democracy and help set a national agenda to energize high school journalism through Kent State University’s new Center for Scholastic Journalism.

The position is tenured at the rank of full professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. A Bachelor’s degree is required.

Click here to apply for the position through the
Kent State Employment Opportunities Page

The professional who lands this Chair must be able to persuade others of scholastic journalism’s role in creating a cadre of diverse and motivated future journalists for online, in print and on air. This media professional already should be a champion of student voices, realizing that free and robust, yet responsible, expression prepares them to be tomorrow’s educated citizens. He or she must be creative in developing discussion and advocating a research agenda about the role of scholastic journalism - from boardrooms to school boards and from the local to the national level.

The School will open a new state-of-the-art building in fall 2007 with separate offices for the Center for Scholastic Journalism. The successful candidate will teach college-level courses or seminars in one of the School’s nine undergraduate majors or the graduate program, including a proposed online master’s degree track in scholastic journalism. The position calls for significant summer engagement in training, research and other outreach.

The School is fully accredited by the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. It has 23 full-time faculty members with significant professional backgrounds to instruct the School’s 1,200 undergraduate and 45 graduate students.

The School has a strong reputation in scholastic journalism, with nationally recognized faculty and staff leadership that includes two former national high school journalism teachers of the year. It has played host to all six years of the American Society of Newspaper Editors High School Journalism Institute for high school educators. It also hosts two of the state’s three high school press associations, the Northeast Ohio Scholastic Press Association (NOSPA) and the Journalism Association of Ohio Schools (JAOS) and has been instrumental in developing a unified Ohio scholastic journalism association. It produces an award-winning regional television show for secondary school students to encourage civic participation and media literacy.

Kent State University is Ohio’s third largest state-supported comprehensive public university, with more than 33,000 students on eight campuses. The School is part of the College of Communication and Information.

Kent State University is dedicated to building a diverse faculty, staff and student body. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

To apply, individuals will need to provide a letter of interest, three letters of reference and any supplemental materials they believe would help show their long-term interest in high school journalism.

For more information, contact Barb Hipsman, associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The Kent State Knight Chair will:

-- Seek out opportunities to present the case for scholastic journalism’s future as a cornerstone to build civic involvement in a younger generation in national settings such as media conventions and forums.

-- Collaborate with professional and scholastic journalism associations to improve communication between the worlds of work and the academy on the
secondary and collegiate levels. Implement an initiative that utilizes the strengths of recently retired educators and the enthusiasm of Fellow from the ASNE High School Journalism Institute to mentor new teachers/advisers.

-- Work with the Director of the Center for Scholastic Journalism, coordinating instruction and programming that may include summer seminars short courses and virtual forms of content delivery..

-- Establish a Scholastic Media Advisory Board to include major Knight grantees and potentially convene a national meeting of major players in scholastic journalism and establish a leadership project to get them to work together.

-- Work with the Center for Scholastic Journalism and the School’s faculty to develop innovative research reflecting the state of scholastic journalism, possibly issuing periodic white papers showing how those
committed to scholastic journalism can make an impact.

-- Develop courses and workshops for current and future journalism teachers and student media advisers, including foundation offerings for newly recruited and under-trained advisers and innovative offerings to rejuvenate long-time advisers.

-- Implement an initiative that utilizes the strengths of recently retired educators and the enthusiasm of Fellows from the ASNE High School Journalism
Institute to mentor new teachers/advisers and support professional media partnership programs currently in existence.

-- Work with the Center Director and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication to establish and promote a master’s program for secondary
school journalism educators with distance learning/online delivery.

-- Work with the Center Director, the Student Press Law Center and News University (www.newsu.org) to create an online teaching module to prepare
print, broadcast and online education reporters for covering the increasing number of scholastic press rights issues.

-- Coordinate fund-raising for scholastic journalism national projects and for workshops for high school advisers.

The professional who accepts this position will work closely with the director of the Center for Scholastic Journalism, Candace Perkins Bowen, who has been a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund High School Journalism Teacher of the Year and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Scholastic Journalism Division Educator of the Year. In addition, she has been the Journalism Education Association president and head of the Scholastic Journalism Division of AEJMC and on the board of the Student Press Law Center for more than 10 years.

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