CURRENT EVENTS
NATIONAL HEARST CONTEST WINNERS
BOSE
BROWN
JOHNSON
BENGE
Four University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media students have been honored with an award in the national Hearst journalism contest. The students won 8th place in the category of Team Multimedia/News or Enterprise for a project about Puerto Rico’s recovery after Hurricane Maria. Website content included short and in-depth text articles, videos, photographs, graphics and timelines. The students on the team were journalism majors Devna Bose, Brittany Brown and Christian Johnson, and IMC major Hayden Benge, who designed the website. All four students had leadership positions at the Student Media Center in 2019. The Hearst competition is considered one of the most prestigious in college journalism. Bose, Brown and Benge graduated in May 2019. Bose is a reporter for the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina through the Report
for America fellowship program. Brown just finished the first year of her M.A. in the Southern Studies documentary program at UM. Benge is an account coordinator for Saxum, a marketing communications agency, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Johnson graduated in May 2020 and continues to work as a photographer intern for UM marketing and communications. The faculty leaders for the project were Patricia Thompson, assistant dean and assistant professor, and Iveta Imre, assistant professor. Recent journalism graduate Ariel Cobbert participated as photography mentor. Cobbert, from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is now a photographer at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis. Jasmine Karlowski, a Study Abroad staff member and M.F.A. graduate student, helped with translations while working on a mini-documentary about the trip.
NEW FACULTY MEMBER Dr. Marquita Smith is the school’s new Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs. She is joining us from John Brown University (JBU) in Arkansas. Her focus will be on growing our graduate programs as she offers her insights on best practices in recruiting and retaining diverse students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Dr. Smith’s primary goal will be to build on some of the amazing work already underway in our graduate programs thanks to Robert Magee and Joe Atkins. Before joining JBU, Dr. Smith was the city editor for The Virginian-Pilot in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She joined The Pilot as the local government editor in 2001. During that time, she also taught part-time at Hampton University and Norfolk State University. In 2008, Dr. Smith took leave from The Pilot to complete a Knight International Journalism Fellowship in Liberia. During her year in West Africa, she created a judicial and justice reporting network to help journalists develop the skills needed to cover the post-war nation’s poverty reduction efforts. Ghanaians elected a new president in 2008, and Dr. Smith was instrumental in creating several training modules used by reporters and editors charged with covering the event. Beyond her teaching responsibilities in the communication department at JBU, Dr. Smith served as Chair for the Division of Communications and Fine Arts where she also oversaw JBU’s bi-weekly newspaper, The Threefold Advocate, and the institution’s yearbook, the Nesher. She chaired the university’s diversity committee and continues to work tirelessly to promote diversity efforts both locally and globally.
8
2020
MARQUITA SMITH
