Professors Janna Quitney Anderson, Brooke Barnett and Tom Nelson received the 2006 Faculty Excellence Awards at the School of Communications Advisory Board luncheon on April 4.
Professor Anderson received the School’s Leadership Award, Professor Barnett the Scholarship Award, and Professor Nelson the Teaching Award.
This is the third annual presentation honoring outstanding faculty work. Previous recipients have been Gerald Gibson and Don Grady for leadership, David Copeland and Connie Book for scholarship, and Ray Johnson and George Padgett for teaching.
Dean Paul Parsons and Advisory Board Chair Don Bolden announced the 2006 recipients, selected by a committee consisting of the three 2005 winners. “We honor three of our faculty for their leadership, teaching and scholarship, knowing that they represent a larger faculty who make Elon and this School excellent,” Dean Parsons said.
The Leadership Award recognizes a faculty member who richly contributes to the ongoing welfare and betterment of the School, the university and the profession. Professor Anderson served as adviser to the student newspaper, The Pendulum, and worked with the dean to develop a new web site for the School, which won first place nationally in 2003 from both the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and the Broadcast Education Association.
“As the School’s director of Internet projects, Janna has propelled us onto the national stage through our partnership with the Pew Internet & American Life project,” Dean Parsons said. “The massive database of internet predictions generated news coverage on CNN and in The New York Times, and Janna has been a keynote speaker at Stanford and published the book Imagining the Internet. Janna’s leadership has been profound, placing us at the center of studying the internet.”
The Scholarship Award recognizes a faculty member whose scholarly work has a significant intellectual impact. Professor Barnett has written two books, one on communication law research and another on media coverage of the War on Terror and the Wars in Iraq as part of the Greenwood Library of American War Reporting. She also has published works and given presentations on television coverage of 9/11, free speech issues, visual theory, AIDS coverage, and visual bias in television news, and was co-recipient of a grant from the National Association of Broadcasters to study PCTV adoption.
“Dr. Barnett is the epitome of an Elon teacher-scholar,” Dean Parsons said. “Her scholarly agenda is spreading the Elon name nationally and contributing to the intellectual vitality of our discipline. And Brooke brings her enthusiasm for scholarship to the classroom, mentoring undergraduate students who will make their own mark someday.”
The Teaching Award recognizes a faculty member who is outstanding in the classroom, current in the discipline, and committed to the intellectual development of students. Professor Nelson teaches broadcasting and core courses in the School, The Global Experience course in the university’s core, and The Great War study abroad course in winter term. In 2004, he was profiled by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which quoted him as saying, “I teach because I like the social aspects of giving and taking. But there’s a paternalistic aspect as well to guiding and protecting students. I truly believe it’s one of the most redemptive things you can do on earth.”
“Professor Nelson has built a reputation as a hardworking, caring and renaissance-style teacher,” Dean Parsons said. “Whatever course he teaches, student comments are similar: amazing, inspirational, challenging, best professor I’ve had at Elon. Thank you for being a teacher, Tom.”