Four Journalism Professors Earn Prestigious Summer Fellowships

Four professors in the Florida A&M University (FAMU) Division of Journalism have earned prestigious fellowships this summer to expand their skill sets in advertising, mobile media, crisis reporting and social media.

Gina Kinchlow, an assistant public relations professor, recently returned from a two-week Visiting Professor Fellowship sponsored by the Advertising Education Foundation at Deutsch, a multinational advertising agency in New York City.

Kinchlow, who serves as the adviser for PRodigy, the award-winning student-run public relations firm, presented research titled “Five Years With the PRodigy PR Firm: Observations on a Student-Run Company and Valuable Lessons On Its Usefulness in the Academy and Beyond” in June at the Hawaii International Conference on Social Sciences.

Dhyana Ziegler, a journalism professor, was selected to receive the American Press Institute’s Minority Educator Fellowship and she will attend the API seminar titled “Mobile Media: Opportunities On The Move” July 18 through 19. She also will participate in the American Biographical Institute and the International Biographical Centre’s World Forum June 28 through July 3 in San Francisco. She will present a research paper titled “Social Networking and Globalization: Evolution and Revolution” during the World Forum.

Andrew Skerritt, an assistant journalism professor and adviser to the award-winning Famuan student newspaper, earned a 2011 Dart Center Academic Fellowship at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. He received additional in-depth training on trauma and crisis reporting.

Leonard Horton, a visiting assistant journalism professor and adviser to News20 at Five, earned a Journalism Educator Fellowship for “Writing in the Age of Twitter” at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., in May.

“I’m going to have students tweet breaking news updates and collaborate using hashtags on similar stories,” said Horton.

According to Horton, a new website, FAMUTVNews.com, will be launched by fall.

“Keeping our students current with industry practices is a high priority,” said James Hawkins, dean of the FAMU School of Journalism and Graphic Communication. “Faculty involvement in these activities support that effort.”

The School of Journalism & Graphic Communication was founded in 1982. Its Division of Journalism was the first journalism program at a historically black university to be nationally accredited by the ACEJMC. It offers four journalism sequences: newspaper, magazine production, broadcast (radio and television) and public relations.