Dunwoody named to direct UW journalism school

The administrative guard will change this summer at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Sharon Dunwoody, Evjue-Basom Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication, will begin a three-year term as the school’s director July 1.

“I view my primary challenge as keeping the school in the top ranks of its peer research universities,” Dunwoody says. “It is not by chance that this school has maintained a national — even international — reputation for excellence in all it does.”

On UW–Madison’s journalism faculty since 1981, Dunwoody has specialized in science and environmental reporting. Most recently she has turned her attention to such questions as patterns of World Wide Web use.

“We’re all awash in a technological revolution that, over the long haul, will change the nature of communication radically,” she says. “The mass media will be particularly affected. The challenge for journalism schools will be to prepare students not just for the evolution of the technical gadgets, but also for the conceptual changes in information delivery that accompany those gadgets.”

For example, Dunwoody says the Web is not just another information delivery channel but a different medium altogether that encourages new relationships between user and provider.

That and other changes in the of news-and-information business have prompted the school to review its undergraduate curriculum. Dunwoody says planners hope to complete a major renovation by the end of the next academic year, “so that we can begin the new century with a set of courses that will provide students with learning experiences appropriate to the rapidly changing field.”

Dunwoody will succeed Robert Drechsel, director since 1991. He agrees that the media have taken dramatic new directions in a relatively short period of time; To further complicate the situation, the school has had to wrestle with a series of difficult budgets during his administration.

“We’ve tried to turn problems into opportunities, and I think we’ve been reasonably successful,” he says. “We are coming through these rather tumultuous times with excellent undergraduate and graduate students, strong and productive faculty and staff, and wonderful support from our alumni and media constituents.”

Drechsel predicts Dunwoody will prove a real asset to the school as it enters the 21st century. “She is a perfect fit for the job: a scholar of national and international reputation, a fine teacher and an experienced leader respected across campus,” he says.

Drechsel will announce Dunwoody’s appointment at the school’s annual awards banquet today (April 17).