Promising to uphold the original ideals of the journalism program, Senior Lecturer Sheila Tefft was appointed director last week, ending the nine-month void of leadership in the program.
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As the Journalism Program's new director, Sheila Tefft says she wants to expand internship opportunities for students in the program. She also said she plans to keep the program small and competitive. The program, which was founded in 1997, has approximately 65 current members.
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The position has been vacant since Loren Ghiglione, the James M. Cox chair and director of the program since its inception in 1997, left Emory last summer to direct the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California.
Senior Associate Dean of Emory College for Student Academic Affairs Peter Dowell said a conflict about whether the director should take an administrative or purely teaching role delayed Tefft's appointment.
Dowell said the program was not designed for the director to do both. "The vision is more like having someone who can run the administrative side and then looking for someone to come and do a term in the Cox chair," he said.
An international search for the $1.35 million-endowed Cox chair will begin immediately, according to Dowell. He hopes to bring in a "big name" in journalism sometime next year.
In the absence of a director, a committee comprised of Dowell, Senior Associate Dean of Emory College Rosemary Magee and Professor of American Studies Dana White has run the program.
Tefft said she evolved into the director of the program. As the program's internship coordinator, she said she has gotten to know the students and the administrative role grew around her. "When I came here I was hired as a lecturer," Tefft said. "It hadn't occurred to me at that time that I would sometime be in this position."
Dowell said the program would continue as a part of the College's liberal arts program. He added that it would stay small, focused and competitive. "This is not a program for people to sample journalism," he said. "Not every student is going to be able to take this."
Dowell's comments directly oppose Ghiglione's focus of expanding the scope of the program. While Ghiglione, now in Los Angeles, said he supported Tefft's appointment, he acknowledged that his ideas for the program sometimes conflicted with those of the University. "As the initial director of the program, I tried to do what was best for the students and for the school," Ghiglione said Wednesday. "There was a different administration at that point and it was a different situation."
Tefft said she wanted to keep the program around 60 students, down from the approximate 85 students in the program last year. "It was a situation where Loren was expanding the program and the number of students," she said. "It's not what [the University] wants right now."
Tefft added that decreasing the numbers of students does not reduce the scope of the program. "We are expanding the types of classes offered," she said adding that there will be new classes next semester including a computer-assisted reporting class to keep up with the trends in the profession.
Tefft said she wants to give a more international focus to the program because spending 12 years as a reporter abroad changed her life. She wants to expand opportunities for students to intern at media outlets in other countries. Internships are required for all students planning to minor or co-major in journalism.
Emory's journalism program differs from traditional journalism schools, which emphasize the "skills of the craft," according to Tefft. Emory's original division of journalism was discontinued in 1952, after the director departed because of lack of support for pre-professional departments. The new program was founded in 1997 with help from an endowment from Cox Enterprises, an Atlanta-based media outlet that owns numerous media outlets, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, WSB-TV.
Both Dowell and Tefft said students looking for a professional education in journalism should look elsewhere because the program is designed to fit into the College's liberal arts curriculum. "I am a product of a journalism school," Tefft said. "If I had to do it again, I would have double-majored."
Tefft said the liberal arts approach gives students a broader perspective than practicing a single trade at a big school.
Dowell agreed with Tefft's vision for the program. "Students who graduate with professional degrees have a whole lot of grounding in professional know-how," he said, "but they may not have as much of a grounding in various academic fields that would give them a grounding in the world they are going into."
College junior Alan Rappeport said he thought Tefft would do a good job as the program's director but said he believed the program should expand.
"It's a double-edged sword," Rappeport said. "But generally the more people and the more energy behind the program the better."
College senior Jared Goldstein said the past year has been frustrating without a director. But he agreed with Rappeport that the program needed to expand if it wants a reputation.
"I want to see it become as big as possible," Goldstein said. "I want it to become the same as any other department on campus. I don't think it will receive the attention it deserves unless it get numbers."
