By Nathaniel Frederick II, PF&R Chair, frederickn@winthrop.edu

The coronavirus pandemic has forced a drastic change in the way of life in the United States. The new normal involves working from home, if possible. More importantly, we must not forget the homeless and other populations that are vulnerable during this time of uncertainty. While anyone can contract the virus, current data suggest a disproportionate burden of illness and death among racial and ethnic minority groups.

By Graduate Student Co-Liaisons Bailey Dick, Ohio University, bd764808@ohio.edu, and Brandon Storlie, University of Wisconsin, bstorlie@wisc.edu

As the graduate student co-liaisons, the largest challenges we have are engaging student members in a meaningful way and division recruitment. Graduate students are extremely busy, juggling many different tasks. Some balance taking courses with conducting research while also teaching as instructors of record. As students progress in their coursework, they prepare for and take their comprehensive exams, start working on their dissertations and navigate the job market. Graduate students tend to spread themselves thin, trying to accumulate as many lines on the CV as possible. Sometimes a commitment beyond basic membership simply isn’t feasible. These last couple of months, the added stressor has been trying to balance everything during a pandemic.

By Teaching Standards Chairs Kristin L. Gustafson, University of Washington Bothell, and Lori Amber Roessner, University of Tennessee

Five scholars will share their mini, hands-on teaching modules featuring original and tested transformative teaching ideas and practices that address pedagogies of diversity, collaboration, community, and/or justice in August. These ideas include carefully curated student learning experiences, an online platform that tracks research data, and a program-wide course redesign that centers on who tells our stories. Come ready to learn more about how each teaching practice might be transferred to your institution or classes and what evidence points to marked changes for students.

By Teri Finneman, Chair, University of Kansas, teri.finneman@ku.edu

It’s officially halftime in my time as your chair, so I wanted to recap the division initiatives that have occurred in the past six months.

Our primary goal has been to vastly improve our outreach to key target audiences this year. Here is a breakdown of what we’ve been working on:

By Nathaniel Frederick II, PF&R Chair, frederickn@winthrop.edu

Creating a news literacy event in your community or on your campus is an ideal opportunity to promote and justify why journalism history matters.

The PF&R committee for 2019-2020 will emphasize diversity and inclusion, as well as offer assistance to members interested in creating public service events that help celebrate journalism history.

By Membership Co-Chairs Maddie Liseblad, Middle Tennessee State University, madeleine.liseblad@mtsu.edu, Rachel Grant, University of Florida, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu, and Perry Parks, Michigan State University, parksp@msu.edu

As your 2019-2020 committee, we’d like to share our primary goals for this year. First and foremost, our overall goal is to grow our membership. We will continue our outreach work as opportunities arise. For example, when nonmembers present media history research at conferences, we reach out and invite them to join our division.

By Teaching Standards Co-Chairs Amber Roessner, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, aroessne@utk.edu, and Kristin L. Gustafson, University of Washington Bothell, gustaf13@u.washington.edu

As AEJMC’s History Division teaching standard co-chairs, we would like to share our two primary goals for the year ahead. First, we want to highlight the best practices in history pedagogy with a special focus on pedagogies of diversity, collaboration, community and justice. And second, we hope to advocate nationally and internationally for the importance of historically informed students across journalism and mass communication curricula. To that end, we will focus on orchestrating the second-annual Transformative Teaching of Media and Journalism History contest and on implementing a new salon venture focused on spreading the word about the importance of historically informed students across journalism and mass communication curricula.