Pictured above: The Peter Rudy Wallace building houses the university’s Department of Journalism and Digital Communication, which won an award for diversity and inclusion.
Jonah Hinebaugh | The Crow’s Nest
By Savannah Carr
As the USF St. Petersburg Department of Journalism and Digital Communication prepares to seek renewal for its professional accreditation, it has received an award to bolster its case.
The Inclusive Excellence award is given every year to departments throughout the USF system that strive to be inclusive and diverse.
“I think that the department earned the recognition as a whole,” said department chair Casey Frechette. “It is something we have really tried to be conscientious about going back many years — since the founding of the department.”
To be considered for the award, the department had to submit an application that answered several questions regarding the department’s efforts to be diverse and inclusive within the classroom, curriculum, student body and faculty.
“The (application) looked at our curriculum and what we focus on in our courses and the composition of our students,” Frechette said. “Even something as specific as the kinds of textbooks we require within our courses.”
According to its application, the department’s student body is the most diverse on campus, with “36% Black African-Americans, American Indians, Hispanics, Native Hawaiians or other students.”
The award is given by the USF system’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion & Equal Opportunity. This is the second year the award has been given. Last year, it went to the USF St. Petersburg psychology department.
“The idea is to recognize specific academic departments that are doing good work in diversity and inclusion,” Frechette said.
Winning the award benefits the department ahead of its re-accreditation period, which happens every six years. The re-accreditation process has nine standards — one of them being diversity.
“It is important for us as a department moving forward into consolidation to be able to demonstrate how we can contribute in valuable ways to the reorganized version of the university,” Frechette said.
The department’s effort toward diversity is demonstrated within the Neighborhood News Bureau, a student newsroom in south St. Petersburg. The Bureau connects students and faculty to the area’s African American community.
NNB provides students the opportunity to have their work published in various professional news outlets, while also giving a historically underrepresented community a platform to share its stories.
“Students work with community members, learn about their history, their work, and the needs of the community, and work to tell contextualized stories that are published with professional media outlets,” said Bernado Motta, director of NNB and an associate professor within the department, in an email.
The department will be recognized for its achievement at a luncheon on March 31 on the Tampa campus.
