School of Journalism and Electronic Media Professor Rob Heller has been selected as the fourth recipient of the CCI Board of Visitors Professorship. 

The BOV Professorship, currently held by Suzie Allard, Chancellor’s Professor in Information Sciences and CCI Associate Dean for Research, was made possible by generous gifts from donors including current and emeritus members of the college’s Board of Visitors. The three-year rotating professorship was established to recognize and reward outstanding CCI faculty members whose research, creative activity, teaching, and academic and professional service have uniquely contributed to the mission of their school, the college and the university.

The University of Tennessee’s School of Journalism and Electronic Media welcomes two new assistant professors this school year: Dr. Mustafa Oz and Dr. Guy Harrison. As they join the Vol family, they will swap their respective alma mater colors for Tennessee Orange.

Faculty and graduate students from the University of Tennessee College of Communication and Information (CCI) presented 10 peer-reviewed research papers at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s (AEJMC) annual conference, which was held virtually Aug. 6-9.

In addition, six CCI faculty served as panelists, moderators, and discussants during the conference.

The Library That Dolly Built, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, student-driven film and documentary about Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, will premiere April 2 in New York City and be screened in theaters across the nation.

Associate Professor of Journalism and Electronic Media Nick Geidner is the director and producer of the film, which was crewed by 15 student members of Land Grant Films, an Emmy-nominated documentary production program housed in UT’s School of Journalism and Electronic Media. JEM video production specialist Clinton Elmore served as the film’s editor.

Robin Lloyd, a writer and editor for Scientific American and adjunct professor of science writing at New York University, will talk about “The End of Investigative Science Writing?” when she delivers the 28th annual Alfred and Julia Hill Lecture at the University of Tennessee. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place on Tuesday, March 31, at 8 p.m. in the College of Nursing Auditorium on the UT campus.

*Andrea Hall now teaches at Troy University as an Instructor. 

By Lexie Little, JEM 414, Fall 2018

Students in their first journalism classes find themselves daydreaming about reporting on the sidelines for ESPN, interviewing A-list stars for People magazine or co-hosting a major network’s morning talk show. But for some, the road to success is not mapped out clearly in black and white like the content they write.

Nick Geidner suspects that if he’d asked his students several years ago if they’d ever watched a documentary, few, if any, would have raised their hands.

So when Land Grant films was born in 2016, Geidner had no idea how wildly successful his documentary program would become.

“We hit at the perfect time,” said Geidner, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Electronic Media in the College of Communication and Information. “Netflix and cable have really changed the way people think about documentaries. All of a sudden documentary filmmaking is hip and there’s an audience for it.”