LETTER FROM THE DEAN

LETTER FROM WILL NORTON, JR.

This summer Dr. Ed Meek, Charles Overby and I have had several conversations with Andy Lack, chairman of the Bloomberg Media Group.

On several of those occasions, Dr. Meek has told Andy that the reason the University of Mississippi produced so many elite journalists is that journalism classes, while dealing with theoretical issues, always focused on assignments that required the development of journalistic expertise.

From the beginning, the Department of Journalism was closely aligned with The Daily Mississippian. Faculty members taught classes and then spent hours with students outside of class, working with them to improve their reporting and writing, photography and video work.

Clearly, the outstanding journalism programs in the nation have been those programs that provide students with a high level of abstraction in classroom lectures and with significant opportunities to apply those abstractions in specific assignments.

Curriculum makes a huge difference in defining the quality of a program. This is our emphasis when we speak to prospective students and their parents when they come to campus. We have been fortunate that this message strikes a chord with so many of them.

Students also look at a faculty when they are deciding where to go to school, and the Meek School has a faculty with significant media experience — some with experience before social media and some with experience in social media. A solid mix of faculty with doctorates and those without doctorates brings a richness in diversity.

Finally, every quality school has outstanding facilities and an engaged and caring alumni.

Five elements are necessary for a school to be good: quality faculty, good students, an up-to-date curriculum, outstanding facilities and exceptional alumni. These elements are at play in the Meek School. As a result, since 2005 the number of majors in the Meek School has increased from about 500 majors to about 1,044 majors. During the first year of the Meek School, 81 new undergrads enrolled. In Fall 2014, 158 enrolled. Moreover, the number of majors who also are majoring in the Honors College has increased from 26 in 2009 to 56 in 2014.

At the same time, the number of graduate students has increased from 15 (four full time and 11 part time) in 2009 to 30 admitted for the 2014-15 academic year, with 21 returning for the second year — 51 in total.

We are grateful that the growth in numbers has been accompanied by improved quality of the student body. The undergraduate retention rate from freshman to sophomore year was 81.5 percent in 2009. Today it is 93.4 percent.

Clearly, the characteristics of a quality program in media are evident in the Meek School, and you will read about them in this second issue of the Meek School.

Janet Worthington has written a personal essay on her father, Dr. Ronald T. Farrar, the chair of the Department of Journalism who guided the unit to accreditation and then left to be director of the School of Journalism at the University of Kentucky. Janet and her brother, Bradley, lived in Oxford four years when their dad was the chair of the department (1973-77).

You will learn about the establishment of the Service Journalism magazine program 30 years ago when Jim Autry supported creation of a magazine program that focused on magazines that helped readers do things. You will read of alumni’s enthusiastic endorsements of the program that Dr. Samir Husni has led since 1984.

You will learn more about Dr. Jeanni Atkins, a senior faculty member who has run the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information and who has been the intellectual anchor of the faculty since the mid-1980s.

I am sure you will enjoy these and other stories.