Arnold Ismach

ARNOLD ISMACH, former dean and retired professor, made a $50,000 bequest to the School for use in a faculty research endowment fund. My intent is to support in any way I can the mission of the School and its faculty, who have created an admirable record of accomplishment over the history of the institution," said Ismach.

GREG KERBER was inducted as a member of Friars, the oldest honorary on the UO campus.

LAUREN KESSLER is continuing work on Full Throttle: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes. Kessler gave a reading in Portland from Full Throttle as part of the 30th anniversary of Haystack Program for the Arts. An article, "Search for Meaning," on how writers should use the tools of anthropologists, was published in the May Writer's Digest. A three-part series on diagnosing and curing your own writing ills was published in Writer's Digest, May, June, July. She was a featured writer at the National Writers' Union first annual Bookwalk in Eugene to benefit local literacy projects. Kessler also was part of the first-ever Literary Arts table at the annual Art in the Vineyard festival July 4th weekend. Her spring term class, Writing the Nonfiction Book, featured visits from a Portland literary agent, the editorial director of Sasquatch Press and the director of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, along with conference calls to a top LosAngeles literary agent and an up-and-coming New York editor at a major house.

Computer guru takes new job Mick Westrick has accepted a position as director of technology and user services at UO's Lundquist College of Business. In his eight years at the School of Journalism and Communication, Westrick oversaw the construction or renovation of all five computer labs and provided technology support for the school's faculty, staff and students. Westrick remains very involved in the Eugene community. He is currently serving as logistics coordinator for Committed Partners for Youth, a mentoring program for at-risk seventh- and eighth-graders; vaudeville entertainment coordinator for the Oregon Country Fair; and 1998 co-chair (with Zanne Miller, M.S. '97) of the Eugene Celebration. In his spare time, Westrick is doing computer consulting for Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (E-LAW), a network of public interest attorneys, scientists, and other advocates around the world who support each others' work by exchanging legal and scientific information to defend the environment.

JAMES B. LEMERT, Wayne Wanta and graduate student Tien Lee are working on "Consequences of Negative Political Advertising," chapter 7 in an edited collection, Engaging the Public: How Government and the Media Can Reinvigorate American Democracy (Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, in press). Lemert is working on a chapter for the forthcoming book to be edited by Slavko Splichal (a public opinion scholar in Slovenia), Vox Populi--Vox Dei? and to be published by Hampton Press. Lemert also is offering a new course: J407/507 Negative Ads: Politics by Trench Warfare? Over the past year, he also has refereed at least a dozen submissions to Journalism & Mass Communications Quarterly, Political Communication, Press/Politics, Journal of Communication.

DENISE MATTHEWS will be continuing research about the changes in the Children's Televison Act at the FCC this summer and completing a survey of broadcasters about these changes. Also, she's working on two documentary projects: one about Gertrude Bass Warner, the woman who founded the UO Museum of Art. The other documentary, "Roll On Columbia," is a collaborative project with Mike Majdic, producer, director at the University's Instructional Media Center and adjunct professor in our program. The documentary focuses on a month in 1941 when Woody Guthrie wrote 26 songs as an employee of the Bonneville Power Authority.

ANN MAXWELL and Peggy Kreshel, University of Georgia, were awarded an American Academy of Advertising Research Fellowship for the oral-history grant proposal, "Too Long Silent: Jo Foxworth and Shirley Polykoff Speak About Their Lives in Advertising." Maxwell presented "Planning for Success: A Look at the Relationship Between Account Planning and Awards for Creativity" in March at the American Academy of Advertising Conference in Lexington, Ky. Wayne Wanta co-authored that paper. She contributed an advertising history chapter to a new principles of advertising textbook published by The Copy Workshop, Advertising and the Business of Brands.

DUNCAN MCDONALD was re-elected to another term on the Accrediting Committee of the Association for Education in Journalism and Communication. He will continue to serve as chair of the committee through the 1998-99 academic year. He and Lauren Kessler have begun work on the fifth edition of When Words Collide.

DEBRA L. MERSKIN has an article forthcoming in the Howard Journal of Communications called "Sending up Signals: A Survey of Native American Media Use and Representation in the Mass Media." Articles accepted for presentation at this summer's Association for Education in Journalism and Communication, Baltimore, Md.; "The American Way to Menstruate: Feminine Hygiene Advertising and Adolescent Girls" in the Professional Freedom and Responsibility division; "Adolescence, Advertising, and the Menstrual Taboo" in the Mass Communications and Society division; and with co-author David Demers, Washington State University, "Corporate Newspaper Structure and Control of Editoral Content" in the Newspaper division. The Women's Studies program awarded Deb Merskin a teaching fellowship for a course titled, "The Mass Media and Girl Culture." She will receive a $2,000 stipend for course development and enrichment, and the School will receive course release funds when she teaches the course next year.

Professor Bill Ryan grabs cash in an effort to raise money for Ad Team

JOHN RUSSIAL and doctoral student Clyde Bentley shared a byline for a major feature story, "Newsroom Awards: Cost is Not the Point--The Style is in the Delivery," in the April edition of Presstime, the magazine of the Newspaper Association of America. Journalism Quarterly has accepted for publication Russial's and Wayne Wanta's article, "Digital Imaging Skills and the Hiring and Training of Photojournalists."

BILL RYAN traveled to Southeast Asia to conduct design seminars in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Singapore. The Singapore sessions were sponsored by the Asian Media and Information Centre (AMIC). The Malaysian seminars were sponsored by AMIC and ADAD Communications. Ryan has designed books, brochures, and other media in Asia. He was a senior Fulbright lecturer and researcher in Singapore a year ago. Ryan also has had a book review accepted for publication in Visual Communication Quarterly. He reviewed Jon Sievert's book, Concert Photography.

ALAN STAVITSKY'S article, "New York's Municipal Broadcasting Experiment: WNYC, 1922-1940," was published in American Journalism. His manuscript, "Counting the House in Public Television: A History of Ratings Use, 1953-1980," was accepted for publication by the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. He presented a paper, "Public Telecommunication and the First Amendment: An Update," co-authored with Tim Gleason, at the annual conference of the Broadcast Education Association in Las Vegas in April. It was part of a panel on public broadcasting issues that Stavitsky organized and moderated.

LESLIE STEEVES participated in a three-person site visit to evaluate a Council for International Educational Exchange program at the University of Ghana in March. In June, she gave a keynote address at a conference called "Re-developing Communication for Social Change: Issues of Power, Gender and Practice." The address was titled, "Gendered Agendas: Dialogue and Impasse in Creating Social Change." She has an article forthcoming in the Journal of Communication. Written with Christine Kellow, the article is titled, "The Role of Radio in the Rwandan Genocide."

Leslie Steeves visited the University of Ghana to evaluate a Council for International Education Exchange program.

WAYNE WANTA moderated a session on methodological advances in survey research at the annual convention of the World Association for Public Opinion Research held in St. Louis in May. He will present a paper at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication convention in August in Baltimore. The paper, co-authored with Salma Ghanem of Texas-Pan American University, examined Latinos' use of Spanish-language cable news. He also will present a paper at the National Communication Association in November in New York City. The paper deals with how the Internet will
impact mass communication theories and was co-authored with Marilyn Roberts, University of Florida. Wanta was invited to speak about the state of graduate education in journalism at the national convention of the Society of Professional Journalists in October in Los Angeles. Wanta has continued to increase his involvement with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Last spring, he was put together the AEJMC convention program for the Communication Theory & Methodology division and was elected chair of the Teaching Standards Committee. Journalism Quarterly has accepted for publication Wanta's and John Russial's article, "Digital Imaging Skills and the Hiring and Training of Photojournalists."

JANET WASKO presented an invited paper, entitled "Is It a Small World, After All," at an international conference on "Questioning International Communication: Discrepancies in Theories and Research" at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, in May. She also gave a plenary address, entitled "Political Economy of Celebration/Celebrating Political Economy" at the Union for Democratic Communications conference in San Francisco in June. She published two articles: "Challenges to Hollywood's Labor Force in the 1990s" in Global Productions: Labor in the Making of the "Information Society," edited by Gerald Sussman and John A. Lent, Hampton Press; and "Film Production in the Information Age" in The Media Studies Reader, edited by Tim O'Sullivan and Yvonne Jewkes, Edward Arnold Publishers. Wasko also was elected recently to the Vice Chair of the Graduate Council, as well as being appointed to the editorial advisory board of Javnost: The Public, the Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture, and to the advisory board of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers' series on Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture.

TOM WHEELER recently signed a contract with NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company of Chicago. NTC will be publishing Tom's first textbook, tentatively titled Photofiction: Ethics & Photography in the Digital Age.