Department Features

If you find yourself in need of some administrative assistance one of these days, you’ll likely be connected to Jenny Bettis, the journalism departments new department manager. Bettis joined the journalism department in October after her family was caught in the middle of the Paradise Camp Fire in California in 2018. 

“We were living right next to Paradise, where the Paradise fire happened, our landlord wanted to sell the house so, [with my husband’s family here] this was just a safe landing place for us.”

Hamida el-Bour is the director of L’Institut de Presse et des Sciences de l’Information (IPSI), and she is a titan of Tunisian journalism. She began her career as an investigative journalist, and she served for a period as the head of the Tunis-Afrique Presse (TAP) wire service. She spoke with Associate Professor Carolyn Nielsen about some of the changes to Tunisian journalism education following the 2011 Jasmine Revolution.

Photos and highlights from the 2019 journalism department picnic.

Betsy O’Donovan came to the journalism department in fall quarter of 2018. She’s from North Carolina, if the many stickers and posters decorating her office don’t give that fact away, the frequent “y’all’s” do.

She is warm and sincere. Everyone who visits her office is quickly invited to take a Snickers from her well-stocked candy mug. When the door to her office is closed there’s a thought-provoking question written on the back for students to write an answer to while they wait. Most of all, she loves her position, and it shows.

2019 is a busy year for Professor Brian J. Bowe.

On Jan. 4, Bowe began his journey to Jordan where he is teaching mass communication theory for five months.

The exchange is facilitated by the U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program and Bowe is one of 800 awarded this opportunity. For those that know Bowe, the exchange falls perfectly in line with the professor’s interests. He’s authored many peer-reviewed journal articles about Islamic media relations and started learning Arabic about ten years ago.

Joan Connell, a senior instructor with 42 years of professional journalism experience, is getting ready to publish her first book “Healing All Creation: Genesis, The Gospel of Mark and The Story of the Universe.”

In his most recent work, “Anticancer Living: Transform Your Life and Health with the Mix of Six ,” master writer and senior instructor at Western, Stephen Howie, gracefully tells the story of people and science to take an insightful look into the relationship between lifestyle choices and cancer. Howie helped produce Anticancer Living as a ghostwriter and collaborator. The book is authored by Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., and Alison Jefferies, MEd.

At the start of September, 2019, three Western journalism professors and six journalism students will be traveling to Tunisia to embark on an educational exchange.

Thanks to a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia, Carolyn Nielsen, Joe Gosen and Brian J. Bowe will be able to spend two weeks in Tunisia before the start of fall quarter and later host Tunisian students at Western.

Within the walls of Western’s journalism department, a vast array of faculty exist. Among them is Dean Wright, an adjunct professor with a long resume and a passion for ethics.

Wright’s teenage years were spent admiring the sense of social justice in the 1960s, leading to his wanting to be a politician. Later, however, he decided to test the waters in journalism.

“I decided that it’s a lot more interesting to write about politicians than to be one,” Wright said.