Bellingham Visual, organized by journalism professors Joe Gosen and John Harris, took place on Saturday, Oct. 19, and featured six panelists, including two Western alumni. The one-day conference was co-sponsored by the Department of Journalism and the Foundation for WWU & Alumni.
Western’s Department of Journalism was well represented at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Professors Carolyn Nielsen, Derek Moscato, Peggy Watt and Brian J. Bowe all participated in the conference, held this year in Philadelphia.
Jack Keith recently retired after 18 years of teaching journalism at Western Washington University. Prior to Western, Keith enjoyed a 30-year career in the field, including the Bellingham Herald and The News Tribune in Tacoma.
This spring, Don Shelton and Natalie Breymeyer are each teaching a section of Western’s reporting course, JOUR 307. While these two professors may have very different journalistic backgrounds, both hope to inspire through instruction.
Lyle E. Harris, a journalism professor emeritus, was the only person to receive a Celebration of Excellence honor despite no longer teaching courses at Western. Harris received the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award to recognize the lasting impact he made on those he taught.
Mitch Evich made his mark at The Western Front in the early 80s as an up-and-coming reporter and editor with a knack for principled news writing and inspiring the same in others, including one of his life-long friends.
In 2022 that friend established a scholarship in his honor.
Students seeking journalism advising will have the joy of being greeted by new faces Jennifer Dalton and Colleen van Pelt, who were welcomed into their journalism department positions as department manager and program coordinator in the fall of 2022.
Western professor Brian J. Bowe took over Western’s journalism department chair position this fall. When expressing his desire to be chair, Bowe told his colleagues that he wanted to adopt the motto, “let’s succeed together.”
Apples, granola bars, Minute Rice, check. Menstrual pads, diapers, hand sanitizer, check. Together, journalism professor Betsy O’Donovan and I weaved through the Winco aisles as we crossed items off O’Donovan’s mental list of items to buy for the journalism department food pantry during winter quarter. The pantry, funded and routinely stocked by Western Washington University journalism faculty, was running low, and it was time for a refill.