JMS faculty choose new department chair
Written by Sarah Laffin, Oct 24, 2011, 0 Comments
Reaching the end of his term, Robert Dardenne, the current chair of the Journalism and Media Studies Department, decided it was time to give someone else the chance to run the department, and he stepped down from his position.
Dardenne found this a good time to focus on other projects he’s working on. His three-year term ends at the end of this semester.
Professor Deni Elliott, Poynter-Jamison chair of Ethics and Press Policy, received support from the faculty to take his place as the fourth chairperson in the program’s 20-year history.
However, this will not become official until she formally accepts the position.
Elliott specializes in practical ethics and publishes work relating to ethical issues, and has worked as the ethics officer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
Elliott is on sabbatical for this academic year and will return in fall 2012. Until then, Dardenne will remain in the chair position.
“I think journalism faculty members have agreed to my remaining as chair in the meantime, which will make the transition to a new chair a little easier,” he said.
Dardenne co-founded the department with Professor Michael Killenberg in 1991. Killenberg recently retired after the spring 2011 semester. At the time the program was created, it was only a master’s program. A few years later, many undergraduates began asking for more classes. Currently, there are over 200 undergraduate students and over 30 graduate students.
“We achieved that distinction, I think, in 2004, being compliant on all 12 of the standards the accrediting agency evaluated at that time,” Dardenne said. “We became a fully accredited program, one of only a few in the United States and the only one in the region with fully accredited undergraduate and graduate programs.”
In the early 2000s, the university was mandated by the legislature to seek separate accreditation, which would make the campus USF St. Petersburg instead of the St. Petersburg campus of USF. The Journalism and Media Studies program became the first department in the College of Arts and Sciences and received accreditation from the national journalism and mass communication accrediting body.
“We think journalism has become a major opportunity for both graduates and undergraduates,” Dardenne said. “Print journalism jobs might be difficult to find these days, but journalism graduates—those who put in the effort required—leave the program with a range of communication abilities that make them valuable resources for many employers.”
Photo courtesy of USFSP
