Where do you work? I joined the Department of Communication at the University of Utah in 2006.

Where did you receive your Ph.D. from? I earned a Ph.D. in Communication and Society from the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.

What is your current favorite class? I developed a beat-reporting project during a weeklong workshop on “Teaching Diversity Across the Curriculum” at the prestigious Poynter Institute in May 2007. Initially, it was incorporated into the semester-long intermediate reporting class I taught. Student-journalists covered a specific diverse beat for the entire term and wrote as many as four multisource stories for publication on a website called Voices of Utah (voices-of-utah.com). Over the years, that class has shifted from a mid-level course to a community-engaged learning capstone, and the name has changed; it is now called “Voices of Utah” to reflect the importance of the published reporting that students do about diverse populations in the Salt Lake Valley. To date, student-journalists have covered 15 different communities, some more than once, and the website I created has been viewed by almost 200,000 people from more than 160 countries.

What is a current research project? I’m taking a break from research after spending a decade working on my recent book about Birmingham World editor Emory O. Jackson and his fight for civil rights in Alabama between 1940 and 1975. But, I have long dreamed about creating a children’s book about another editor I’ve studied—Beatrice Morrow Cannady, leader of the Portland, Oregon, Advocate in the 1920s and 1930s. My dissertation and subsequent book have brought a lot of attention to the activist-editor—including a new elementary school named for her—and I would enjoy creating a book so youth can learn more about her passions for education and equality.

What is a fun fact about yourself? I love to eat grits, which is an unusual food choice for someone raised in Southern California. Whenever I travel in the South, I look for local mills where I can purchase cloth bags of yellow or white or blue grits. But once, TSA agents at Reagan National Airport were puzzled by a dense bag of grits I had purchased at nearby Mount Vernon. I tried to explain that the contents were similar to oatmeal or porridge but they still were dubious. I finally realized that one agent had a New York accent and asked about his familiarity with Italian cuisine. “Polenta!” I exclaimed, after the agent said he missed the city’s Italian food. “Grits are like polenta!” And with that, the two-pound bag was returned to my carry-on.