Journalism dean search narrowed to 3 candidates

The committee hunting for someone to fill the shoes of retiring IU School of Journalism Dean Trevor Brown has narrowed its search down to three.\nAgain.\nAfter a committee failed to reach a consensus on a single candidate in the spring of 2004, a new committee, chaired by Associate Dean of Journalism Graduate Studies Dan Drew, announced its three new finalists Friday.\n"I'm very confident that we have excellent candidates this year, balanced candidates that have professional experience, academic experience and administrative experience," Drew said. "It's very important that the candidates have a great deal of respect for (journalism) theory and practice."\nDrew said the 16-member committee unanimously approved the selections and was enthusiastic about the backgrounds of finalists Christine Martin, Bradley Hamm and Sandra Braman.\nAll three candidates expressed a mixed sense of excitement and honor at being named a contender for a position that each described as one of the most outstanding in the country.\n"It has a sterling reputation and incredible graduates," Martin said. "Dean Brown has established it as a truly extraordinary institution in education."\nMartin, currently the vice president for institutional advancement at West Virginia University, said she has spent the last 20 years in education as a journalism professor, writing coach, working with the Poynter Institute and as the dean of the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism at WVU.\nEarly in her career, she worked as an education reporter and editor for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the Uniontown Herald-Standard in Pennsylvania. Martin won the National Education Writers Association Award for investigative journalism and an American Cancer Society Award for health reporting, according to her biography provided by WVU. \nHamm, an assistant professor of communications at Elon University School of Communications in Elon, N.C., said the accomplishments of IU's journalism program drew him to apply for the job.\n"I think the (IU journalism) program has such a history, such a legacy," said Hamm. "Anyone would love to be the dean." \nHamm, who served as interim dean for one year and has served as associate dean, said Elon's School of Communications -- which includes journalism, broadcasting, film, advertising and public relations -- has an undergraduate program and faculty numbers that are about as large at the undergraduate journalism level as IU. \nBefore coming to Elon -- which after Duke and Wake Forest is the third largest private university in North Carolina -- Hamm worked as a sports writer for The Salisbury Post in North Carolina. After completing graduate school, he worked for The Associated Press in South Carolina, and changed paths toward journalism education after acquiring his master's degree.\n"I think if you look at what we've done at Elon, we've taken a program that was not well known five years ago and have made it into one of the fastest growing programs in the nation," Hamm said.\nBraman, a professor of journalism and mass communications at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said she was excited to be in contention for the position because of the opportunity to help chart the direction of journalism in the 21st century.\n"(The IU Journalism School's) faculty has already chosen to build upon that tradition by directly confronting the challenges presented by new technologies and the changing media environment," Braman wrote in an e-mail. \nBraman has worked in print reporting, freelance writing and public relations. She has also written a number of articles for scholarly journals on the interactions between journalism and society, and sits on the editorial boards of nine journals. She previously served as the chairwoman of the communication law and policy division of the International Communication Association.\nAfter interviewing the three finalists again, Drew said he would like to assemble a panel of journalism students with different concentrations to give written feedback on each of the candidates. After the candidates meet with alumni and faculty, the committee will select one and send her or him to be approved by Interim IU-Bloomington Chancellor Ken Gros Louis. \nTrevor Brown has served as journalism school dean since 1985, making his term the longest of any dean currently on campus. A member of the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame and a member of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies' board of trustees, Brown has been an IU faculty member since 1972.\nDrew said the search to replace Brown had been grueling, but is something that must be done.\n"We understand we have to have a new dean this year," Drew said with a smile. "We cannot clone Trevor, unfortunately."\n-- Contact Senior Writer Tony Sams at ajsams@indiana.edu.