Folkerts to step down as UNC journalism dean

Jean Folkerts, dean of the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, announced Oct. 8 that she will step down as dean on June 30, 2011. Folkerts, a media historian, will remain on the school’s faculty to teach courses, conduct research and mentor students.

“I've been impressed with Jean’s ability to lead Carolina’s journalism school and be innovative during a time of great change in the media. She achieves the right balance of excellent teaching and research with service and outreach to media professionals and high school journalism students,” said UNC’s Chancellor Holden Thorp. “Jean is an exceptional leader, and I tried my best to get her to stay.”

The University will conduct a national search for a new dean of the school. UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Dean Jim Dean will lead the search.

"I came to the school in 2006 with a charge to help the school make a transition to the new, digital media environment, and above all – as a donor and longtime friend of the school told me early in my time here – to 'take good care of our school.' I hope I’ve done that," said Dean Folkerts. "Together with our alumni, faculty, students and staff, I think we have created a climate of constant innovation and a desire to be the best. In these changing times, deans need to be freshly engaged both in academia and in the professional world. Staying in the job too long can become an occupational hazard."

Folkerts’ tenure as dean, which began in July 2006, has been marked by successful fundraising, intensified focus on digital media, a curriculum overhaul, facilities upgrades, and an expansion of programs and outreach. UNC journalism students won the national championship of collegiate journalism last year, winning the overall competition of the Hearst journalism awards.

The school set its record for fundraising – $7.7 million in private gifts – in the fiscal year that ended June 30. Since Folkerts became dean, donors established four new distinguished professorships and many new graduate and undergraduate scholarships while the school significantly increased grant applications and research funding.

Folkerts led the school’s participation in the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education with 11 other top journalism schools. UNC’s contribution to Carnegie-Knight Initiative’s experimental News21 project – “Powering a Nation” – has won more than 40 national and international awards for multimedia reporting.

She worked with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to convert the school’s Knight Chair in Mass Communication to the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics and added a second Knight Chair in Digital Advertising. The school is now only one of two in the nation with two Knight chairs.

A $4.1 million estate gift from UNC alumnus Reese Felts allowed Folkerts to create the Reese Felts Digital News project that launched this fall. The project experiments with digital news and studies the communities that form around the news. It is designed to help journalism and media professionals adapt to the digital media environment.

Folkerts revamped the school’s curriculum in fall 2009 to respond to changes in the industry and broaden all students’ digital media skills. She opened a student newsroom on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, added digital media courses for public relations and advertising students, and secured funding to begin a student-run advertising and public relations agency.

Last year, the school converted its television teaching studio to high definition equipment to ensure that broadcast students are trained in the latest technology. Folkerts partnered with the UNC’s university relations office to create a second high definition studio in the school that enables major network and cable outlets to interview University faculty and administrators from campus.

Folkerts developed new international partnerships and student experiences in Europe and South America, adding to the school’s strong relationships with media organizations in China, Mexico and South Korea.

She led the creation of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy, a collaboration with the UNC School of Law, that has grown into a forum for study and debate about the important media law and policy issues facing North Carolina and the nation. The media law center hosted a visit by FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn this week to discuss the past decade of American media and what the future might hold.

This fall, the school launched an online master’s degree in technology and communication – an innovative master’s degree in digital media.

Prior to coming to Chapel Hill, Folkerts served in several positions at George Washington University. She was director of the School of Media and Public Affairs, interim dean of Columbian College of Arts & Sciences, and associate provost for special academic initiatives. In 2001, she was named teacher of the year by the Freedom Forum for excellence in the teaching of media history, and she was named a Kansan of Distinction by the Topeka Capital-Journal for excellence in media and journalism. From 1992 to 2001, she was editor of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. Her book, “Voices of a Nation,” written with Dwight Teeter, chronicles the history of U.S. media. A second book, now in the fourth edition, “Media in Your Life,” co-authored with Stephen Lacy and Ann Larrabee, is an account of contemporary mass media. She serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Communication and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

Folkerts’ professional experience includes work as a daily newspaper reporter, a public relations professional and magazine editor for The Menninger Foundation, freelance magazine article writer and as assistant press secretary to a former Kansas governor.

Folkerts was director of student publications at Washburn University in Topeka; she taught at the University of Texas at Austin; and was an associate professor and director of the Department of Communications at Mount Vernon College before moving to GWU in 1990.