People

Hubbard School Directors

 

• Ralph D. Casey: 1930-1958
• Robert L. Jones: 1958-1978
• F. Gerald Kline: 1978-1985
• Dan Wackman: 1985-1986 (interim)
• Mary Ann Yodelis Smith: 1986-1989
• Dan Wackman: 1989-1995
• Robert Scott: 1995-1998 (interim)
• Al Tims: 1998-2017
• Jane Kirtley: 2017 (interim)
• Elisa Cohen: 2017-present
   

Ralph D. Casey
The Hubbard School couldn’t have asked for a more dedicated and innovative first director. Ralph D. Casey served from 1930 to 1958 and built a program that would last for generations. Casey got his start at the University of Washington with a B.A. in journalism and political science. He taught at Washington and the University of Montana as a journalism professor before coming to the U of M. Casey was determined to design courses and create a program that worked with the College of Liberal Arts. He developed and produced a relationship with the College that was essential to integrating the journalism curriculum with diverse classes, something Casey thought vital to being a good journalist. “The heart of journalism instruction occurs in the Midwest because of the land grant college tradition,” he said in an interview in 1967. “It wasn’t the New England liberal arts concept. It was the concept of a university that had broad support from agriculture clear to zoology with all of the techniques and disciplines between.” To him, the press has to relate to social institutions in society, and journalists have to know things like press law, freedom of the press and international and foreign press. He argued that they should be trained as diversely and thoroughly as lawyers and doctors. He also worked with Professor Mitch Charnley to create TV and radio programs. Outside the School, Casey continued his commitment to the field. He edited the Journalism Quarterly for 10 years and even took a trip across Europe with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization after World War II to help reestablish lines of communication and build up the press, radio and film industries. After he retired, he lectured across the country and served on the faculty boards for the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Stanford. Casey and his wife moved back to Seattle in 1961 and lived out the rest of their lives there. Nevertheless, Casey remained connected to the School and visited it and his many friends until his passing in 1977.

Ed Emery
Edwin “Ed” Emery touched many people, places and publications during his 39 years as a journalism professor at the Hubbard School. Emery started at the School in 1945 after earning his Ph.D. in history at the University of California at Berkeley. Before moving to Minnesota, Emery worked at multiple news outlets, like the San Francisco Examiner, where he covered World War II. Emery wrote 11 books during his lifetime, including 1954’s “The Press and America,” a leading text in mass media history, translated into four languages. Additionally, he co-wrote “Introduction to Mass Communication,” which co-author William Agee said was different from everything else in the field. Emery worked as an editor of Journalism Quarterly from 1952-1973 and the Director of Graduate Studies at the School from 1973-1979. Emery was called a “champion of the student” and created a place for aspiring historians to come and grow. It was rumored Emery would even pay for students’ tuition when they needed it. Along with his teaching in Minnesota, Emery was a visiting professor and lecturer in over 20 countries, and in 1980, the Society of Professional Journalists awarded him with their Distinguished Teaching in Journalism Award. He won numerous other awards during his teaching years, including the Special Chair of Taiwan's National Science Council and a Social Science Research Council grant. Emery retired in 1984. He died from leukemia at age 79.

George Hage
George Hage earned his B.A. and M.A. in journalism from the School and his Ph.D. in American Studies from the University. When he started teaching in 1946 to help with the influx of WWII veterans, he quickly became the writing professor. Teaching everything from basic reporting to literary aspects of journalism, Hage was known for his commitment to his students and the profession. During his summers off, he worked at the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. He was heavily involved with the Minnesota Daily as a member of the Board of Student Publications. Hage was the person who stood up for the Daily’s controversial humor edition in 1979 and helped take the University to court over the Board of Regents cutting their funding. After winning, the Daily’s lawyer for the case called him “the moral force” behind the dispute. Hage also fought for students and professionals outside the University as part of the Committee for Integrated Education. In 1972, he worked alongside the NAACP to desegregate Minneapolis schools that used unequal hiring practices and redistricting to work around federal laws. And as the ombudsman for the Minneapolis Tribune, Hage walked the picket lines for their 1971 strike. As the Director of the Minnesota Journalism Center, he was committed to connecting professionals and students. He retired in 1983, while also receiving the Society of Professional Journalists Distinguished Teaching in Journalism Award. When he retired, a former student, Bev Kees, said she carried his teaching with her. “What convinces me of his quality as a teacher is that, after 20 years, I am still quoting him to young journalists and his opinion of my work still matters,” she said. “I will push myself a little because I don't want to disappoint George Hage.” He passed away in 1993 at age 78.

Robert Jones
As the second director of the School, Robert L. Jones proved the unit was here to stay as a national standard for journalism schools. Jones was born in Kansas and earned his B.A. at Wichita State before serving in the Air Corps as a lieutenant during WWII. After his service, he returned to school and earned his M.A. and Ph.D in psychology at the University of Minnesota. Jones joined the journalism faculty, and served as the director of the Research Division from 1952 to 1958. When Ralph Casey stepped down, Jones stepped in and directed the School from 1958-1978. Known for being a vigorous and dedicated leader in education and research, Jones helped the school become one of the best in the nation. While he served as director, the school was ranked by other accredited schools as number one in the nation and was fully accredited by the American Council for Education in Journalism multiple times. Besides his posts at the School, he served on national boards and associations. In 1978, Jones stepped down to resume full-time teaching at the school. He worked for many years before retiring.

Virginia Harris
Virginia Harris was the School’s first female faculty member. She started part-time in 1965 and became a full-time assistant professor of advertising and copywriting in 1968. Even though she earned a B.A. in journalism from what is now Illinois State University, her experiences in public relations came from KELO, a TV and radio station in South Dakota. There she picked up skills such as scriptwriting, copywriting and covering special events, and even hosted a cooking show called “Sparkle and Spice.” When she moved to Minneapolis, she worked for Knox-Reeves advertising before taking up the SJMC position. Former Director Robert Jones called her “extraordinary” and said she was “always out ahead” of the other professors. Jones recalled how students would stand in long lines outside her office and said Harris did as much teaching in her office as she did in her classes. It became clear that students were taking another informal course through Harris' teaching, so they created another class for her to teach advertising copywriting. Jones said Harris, alongside renowned professors George Hage and Mitch Charnley, created “a phalanx of instructional writing that nobody could beat.” Despite this praise, Harris humbly maintained that all she did is bring out what the students already have. “I’m not some artistic goddess sitting up there on their shoulders,” she said at one time. “The ideas come to them, and we work together to develop them. But the ideas are theirs.” She worked at the school until retiring in 1982. She died in 1998.

Walter Brovald
A champion of community newspapers, Walter Brovald left his impact on the field before, during and after his teaching career at the Hubbard School. Brovald earned his B.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1949, and after working for a local newspaper and radio station, he bought the Cadott Sentinel in 1954. He served as its editor and publisher until 1966, and in those 12 years, the paper won 54 state and national awards. He was also President of the Wisconsin Press Association in 1962. 1979: The Minnesota Journalism Center, funded by a gift from John and Elizabeth Cowles, is created to promote interaction between journalism academics and professionals. He left the Sentinel to get his M.A. in journalism from the Hubbard School in 1966. He became a full instructor in 1967, and joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1969. The Board of Regents named him a full professor in 1980. Brovald served as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the School, a business advisor to student publications, chair of the scholarship and internship committees and served as acting director for the 1983-1984 academic year. After a two-year leave for health reasons, Brovald passed away in 1991 at age 62.

 

Dan Wackman
A research behemoth, Dan Wackman was a teacher, advisor, researcher and director during his many years at the Hubbard School. Wackman earned his M.A. in political science and journalism and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He taught at the University of Michigan before joining the Hubbard School in 1971. He started as an assistant professor and head of the Communications Research Division. In 1978, he became a full professor and continued to lead the CRD until 1982. He also served as the Associate Director of the Media Management and Economics Resource Center in 1987. Wackman specialized in mass communication research and focused on the role advertising has on children as consumers. He was also fond of media management and developed the School’s media management program and textbook with Cowles Professor John Lavine. In 1985, he was the chair of the curriculum committee. And, as the University was facing extensive state budget cuts, Wackman was the Executive Director of the College of Liberal Arts Minnesota Campaign in 1986, a specialized fundraising effort. Wackman served one year as acting director of the Hubbard School in 1985-1986 after Director Gerald Kline retired from the job. When Director Mary Ann Yodelis Smith took a job at the University of Wisconsin in 1989, he became the full director. He retained his teaching position while director and taught classes in advertising and research methods alongside media management. Wackman also authored seven books, including the media management textbook, during his time at Minnesota. He resigned as the Hubbard School Director in 1995 to become the CLA liaison during the University’s transition from quarters to semesters. He continued to teach and research part-time at the School and returned to become a full-time professor and advisor. When talking about her graduation in 2007 from the Hubbard School, Meghan Norris said Wackman was someone she needed to get her degree. “The J-school doesn't hold your hand, but it is always there to support you,” Norris said. “Having an advisor like Professor Wackman was critical. The guidance and encouragement he gave me were invaluable.” Wackman retired in 2016 after working for the School for 45 years.

Jean Ward
As the first female full professor at the Hubbard School, Jean Ward fought for herself and other women in the field. Ward graduated from Hubbard with a B.A. and wrote for the Minnesota Daily while studying at the School. Ward returned to earn an M.A. in communications and a Ph.D. in American Studies in 1967. In 1972, two years after becoming a junior faculty member at the School, Ward served on a University Senate committee revising the tenure code. During her stint, she advocated strongly for the struggles junior faculty—particularly women— face when seeking promotions or tenure and helped rewrite unsuitable language in the existing code. In her research, Ward focused on urban neighborhood press in the 1970s and information technology after seeing the impact of innovation on the engineering and medical fields. Her curiosity led her to co-create the School’s required class Information for Mass Communication with Professor Kathy Hansen. “Jean Ward could see around corners and anticipate what was coming before most people even knew where the corners were,” Hansen wrote of Ward after she died. “Jean once told me that people in the 1970s thought she was crazy for pursuing changes in information sources as a research topic. But she wasn’t crazy. She was just seeing around corners.” Jean Ward passed away peacefully in 2020. She was 89.

F. Gerald Kline
F. Gerald “Jerry” Kline became the director of the Hubbard School late in his career, but still brought new life to the school. “As director of the school, he was a man of vision and vitality, and he brought a high level of excitement and energy to us,” said former Hubbard School professor and director Dan Wackman at one time. “He made the school and us as colleagues much better for his presence.” Kline earned a B.A. in philosophy in 1963 at the University of North Dakota; in 1969, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. While at the U of M, he directed the research center and worked as an assistant professor. He joined the faculty at the University of Michigan as an associate professor; he founded the Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Mass Communication. He served as its director until 1972 and left Michigan in 1978 to come to the Hubbard School. As a director, Kline also served as a representative of the Hubbard School and the Twin Cities. In 1980, Kline represented the Hubbard School on a three-week trip to Europe sponsored by the U.S. International Communications Agency. The same year he attended the First Amendment Congress—a conference about freedom of expression—as a delegate from the Twin Cities. He consulted the United States Satellite Broadcasting Inc. of Saint Paul—one of eight companies in America with direct broadcast satellite systems permits—in 1983. He stepped down as director in 1985 to accept a position as a special assistant to the University’s president. However, he continued to be a journalism professor. Kline passed away from cancer in 1986. He was 49.

Hazel Dicken-Garcia
Hazel Dicken-Garcia began teaching at the Hubbard School in 1979. During her 31 years, she touched students as both a teacher and a mentor. “I don’t know that I have ever met someone who could so consistently push you to do better while firmly cheering you on as the best,” said former student, Ph.D. advisee, co-author and friend Giovanna Dell’Orto. Dicken-Garcia was a specialist in the history of journalism. Her book “Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America” won the award for the best book published in the field in 1990 by Kappa Tau Alpha, a journalism and mass communications honor society. As a nationally recognized professor, Dicken-Garcia had many awards to her name, including the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Distinguished Service Award, the Morse Minnesota Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Contribution to Undergraduate Education and the AEJMC award for Distinguished Contributions to Graduate Education. Additionally, many of her dissertation advisees earned the AEJMC’s dissertation award. When she retired in 2008, the Hubbard School published a collection of her works to honor her service to the school. She passed away in 2018 at 79.

Mary Ann Yodelis Smith
As the first female director of the School, Mary Ann Yodelis Smith powered through problems with poise and persistence in her two years at the School. Early on, Yodelis Smith spent 14 years as a nun. At the same time, she wrote for several Iowa newspapers. She went on to earn B.A.s in English, Secondary Education and Theology from Briar Cliff College. She earned an M.A. in Journalism in 1969 and a Ph.D. in Mass Communication in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She returned to UW in 1978 and served as the Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs for eight years. While at UW, Yodelis Smith also earned multiple awards and grants, wrote articles for journals and campus magazines and gave more than a dozen academic presentations across the U.S. Alongside her work at UW, she was president of the Journalism Council for one year and was heavily involved in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. At the AEJMC, she served as head, vice-head and treasurer of the history division and on several general committees. She continued this legacy of work at the U of M when she became director of the School in 1986. She wrote a paper titled “The Delicate Balance: Feminism and the First Amendment,” and served on a panel on the same topic. She won a service award from the alumni association when she resigned in 1988. Smith died in 1994 after surviving eight years with cancer.

Don Gillmor
During his 35 years at the Hubbard School, both colleagues and students revered Professor Don Gillmor as a bastion for free speech and press. After a 12-year term at the University of North Dakota, Gillmor joined the School faculty in 1965. He taught as a specialist in media law and first amendment rights until he retired in 1998. Gillmor earned his B.A. in liberal arts from the University of Manitoba in 1949 and earned his M.A. from the University of Minnesota a year later. He was a reporter for Winnipeg Free Press and was also a part-time copyreader for the Fargo Forum and the Grand Forks Herald while serving on the faculty of the University of North Dakota. He earned his Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Minnesota in 1961. One of the most lasting impacts of Gillmor’s legacy is the founding of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law (see p. 14). Gillmor also helped establish the law division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in the 1970s. He wrote many scholarly articles, as well as the book “Mass Communication Law: Cases and Comment,” which became an integral part of journalism education. He was even named one of the country’s “sexiest professors” by Esquire in the early ’70s. In one of his more than 20 major works, Gillmor wrote, “It is no part of the government's business to decide for the citizen-critic what is of social value in communication and what is not.” And in another, “Freedoms must be exercised with a degree of ethical responsibility … society is best served by a press governed by conscience rather than by government coercion.” Gillmor died in February 2013.

Al Tims
Al Tims was never one to take the easy way out, so it wasn't a surprise when he exceeded expectations as interim director of the Hubbard School. It also wasn't a surprise when he was named full director in 1999. Before that, Tims was the Director of both Graduate Studies and Undergraduate Studies at the School and the Director of Area Studies Programs of the Institute of International Studies at the University. Tims earned his Ph.D. in mass communication in 1982 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He spent a few years teaching at other schools and working with government policy agencies until he joined the Hubbard School in 1987. After becoming interim director in 1998, Tims inherited the School’s policy to lobby the legislature for grant money. Once approved, Tims spearheaded the plan for remodeling Murphy Hall, restructured the curriculum to focus on new and changing media, and implemented a professional master's degree program for strategic communication. Tims was an advocate for the School’s robust adjunct faculty. “Adjunct professors play a vital role in what the School is trying to accomplish," he said at the time. “They're the key link between the professional community and the students, and are the perfect complement to what the regular faculty provide. We're incredibly lucky to have such a vibrant community of adjuncts to enrich our program.” Tims retired in 2017 after 30 years with the Hubbard School.

Thomas Heggen
If you walked into Pillsbury Hall in 1939, you’d likely see a young man with dark curly hair and a green corduroy jacket slouched over a typewriter writing a term paper hours before it was due. That was Thomas Heggen, renowned American novelist, World War II vet, and University of Minnesota journalism graduate. “I think Tom Heggen was a genius,” wrote Victor Cohn, classmate and friend, in his essay dedicated to Heggen after his early death in 1949. Heggen was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1918 and graduated from the School in 1941. During his time at the School, he wrote for both the Minnesota Daily and Ski-U-Mah, but Cohn said Heggen wasn’t as passionate for journalism as he was for the freedom that came with it. “Heggen took journalism because he considered writing and newspaper or magazine work the easiest way he knew to exist and do what he pleased,” Cohn wrote. “He gave the subject as little attention as anything else ... yet he was easily expert at headline writing, editing, makeup and typography.”

Grades weren’t pressing to Heggen, but he excelled regardless. There were few people—students or instructors—he considered worth his time, Cohn said. But those he did, he greatly admired—among them, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Cohn said Heggen only wrote about sad topics, often tragedies, and spent most of his time in silence, either studying people or lost in his thoughts.“He had great black moods,” he said. “He was greatly concerned with people and their pitiful little attempts to lead simple, reasonably happy lives in a confusing world.”

Perhaps this is what led him to write “Mister Roberts,” the darkly funny, best-selling novel based on Heggen’s service during World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he spent four years in the Navy and started “Mister Roberts” while deployed. The book pulls from Heggen’s experience overseas, capitalizing on the feeling that he spent his best years standing watch. The play and movies drew on the novel’s humor, but Cohn described it as “hysterical laughter at a funeral.” After its publication in 1946, it quickly became a bestseller and sold more than one million copies. Two years later, Heggen co-wrote the play adaptation with Joshua Logan. It premiered on Broadway, starring Henry Fonda as the title character, and won five Tony Awards. Cohn donated one of them alongside a portion of an original manuscript to the School in 1988. At the time of Heggen’s passing, the play already had more than 500 performances. 

Unfortunately, Heggen didn’t live long enough to see the screen adaptations of his story. There are two “Mister Roberts” movies; one came out in 1955, and a TV movie came out in 1984. Additionally, Warner Brothers released a one-season sitcom in 1965. After his passing, his parents donated money to the School to build a library in his honor. The Thomas Heggen Memorial Library opened in Murphy Hall in 1950 and still stands to this day. 

Eric Sevareid
Arnold Eric Sevareid, known as Eric, was a broadcast legend in TV and radio during his nearly 40 years in the news business. Known for his clever wording and keen analysis, Sevareid was a talent of the 20th century. The son of Norwegian immigrants, Sevareid was born in North Dakota, but moved to Minneapolis when he was young. But no matter what age, Sevareid said he never wanted to be anything other than a journalist.

He started at the University of Minnesota in 1931; here, he became a renowned campus activist and a reporter at the Minnesota Daily and the Minneapolis Journal. At 19, he wrote his first book about a canoeing trip he and a friend took up the Minnesota River. After graduating in 1935 with a major in political science and a minor in journalism, Sevareid studied abroad in Europe and worked for the United Press and the Paris Edition of the New York Herald Tribune. Then, on the eve of World War II, he was plucked by CBS to become their French correspondent in 1939. That position skyrocketed his career. Sevareid was in Paris when France surrendered to Germany in 1940, the last American to report from the city. After fleeing with his family, he ended up in London and reported on the Battle of Britain. Sevareid, along with Edward R. Murrow and William Shirer, is credited with establishing broadcast news as a legitimate journalism source. His dedication in the Television Hall of Fame lists him as reaching “the hearts of millions” with his wartime broadcasts. Sevareid spoke like he was reading wartime poetry. “Paris died like a beautiful woman in a coma; without struggle, without knowing or without even asking why,” he said over a radio broadcast on his last night in Europe. “London fights down her fears every night, takes her blows and gets up again every morning. You feel yourself an embattled member of this embattled core.”

After the war, he moved back to America and started at CBS’s Washington Bureau. He worked part of the time as the chief Washington correspondent and had a five-minute weekend segment called “Eric Sevareid and the News.” In 1959, he was back in Europe as a “roving correspondent.” After five years, he was appointed a national correspondent and spent the rest of his CBS career alongside Walter Cronkite with his daily analysis segment on the CBS Evening News. For the next 13 years, Sevareid interviewed dozens of high-profile personalities, including multiple presidents, and reported in more than six countries. Throughout his career, Sevareid wrote seven books, covered everywhere from Saigon to the Dominican Republic, and earned multiple awards, including three Emmys and the Freedom Medal of Norway. He also received honorary degrees from eight universities.

The School honored him in 1980 by naming its library after him. Six years later, he established an endowment fund at the School for the library, which provided updates for the well-loved space. Despite attending the university before TV and radio news courses existed, he made a name for himself through them. Though often referred to as a writer, he discovered a real love for broadcasting. “It is a marvelous and frightening instrument, broadcasting, as part of this marvelous and frightening century,” he said. “But ordinary men must use it, as ordinary men have made this century what it is…The camera’s unblinking eye sees through character faster than the printed word.” Sevareid died in 1992 from stomach cancer. He was 79.

Mitchell Charnley
It took Professor Emeritus Mitchell Charnley 12 years to retire from the School and the University. He hit the required retirement age–68–in 1966 after 32 years at the School, but after jumping around to a couple of different positions, he officially retired for the fourth time in 1978. And he returned for one more year as the interim director of University Relations. “I can think of no other lifestyle that could be so satisfying to a man than having been a teacher,” Charnley said at a banquet honoring his 90th birthday in 1988.

Ralph D. Casey, the School’s first director, encouraged Charnley to join the faculty while Charnley taught at Iowa State University. Casey had been one of Charnley’s professors at the University of Washington when he got his master’s degree, and after 10 years in the industry and four as a teacher, Charnley was already proving what an invaluable instructor he was. Even students like Pauline Gough—who received an F on her first paper for one of Charnley’s classes—said he was patient, encouraging, and always ready with a letter of recommendation. He valued succinctness and accuracy over almost all else, but he never let his responsibilities as an editor override his relationship with his students.

When Michael Soffin transferred from NYU in 1949, he knew no one and showed up two weeks before classes started. The only person even inside Murphy Hall was Charnley. “He sat there in his sports coat and made me as comfortable as he could,” Soffin said. “He was one of the leading faculty.” Charnley helped Soffin find a place to live and offered to be his professor for the next two years. When they announced Charnley’s 90th birthday celebration, Soffin and his wife visited.

Some other attendees at his 90th included professors George Hage and Don Gillmor and media professionals such as Harry Reasoner and Eric Sevareid. “As far as my career goes, he probably made it,” said Reasoner in 1988. “I think many students would say he was the best teacher they ever had.” While he taught, Charnley advised student publications and continued to publish his own work, including three books. He also served as a critic for the Minneapolis Tribune and as managing editor for Journalism Quarterly for 10 years. Alongside Casey, Charnley helped establish the radio and television program at the School, which earned him the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Radio-TV News Directors Association in 1963. In the years following, he garnered more distinctions, but in his obituary, Professors Hage and Gillmor highlighted his commitment to his students. “Most people,” Hage said, “will remember him as an editor-educator whose standards were very high and who helped [students] improve their thinking and their writing.” “He made you take his course very seriously,” Gillmor added. “Yet he made you feel like you were special and were going to be a great reporter someday.” Charnley passed away in 1991 at the age of 92.

John Sim
John “Cam” Sim spent more than four decades at the School, earning titles like “unofficial office manager for Murphy Hall” and “the scholarly fellow.” Professor Emeritus Edwin Emery dubbed him both at Sim’s unofficial retirement in 1979. Sim received his B.A. at the University of North Dakota and taught there while editing and co-publishing the East Grand Fork Record for a decade. That work established him as a leading authority on community journalism when he joined the School in 1956. Nicknamed “Mr. Weekly Newspaper” by his community press courses, Sim taught a few other subjects, including reporting, editing, and media law. His commitment granted him tenure and promotion to associate professor in 1961 and full professorship in 1968. Sim had a propensity for fostering students both in and out of the School. For 20 years, he served as a placement officer. He directed the Minnesota High School Press Association for 14 years, and continued to give speeches at high school press meetings. He also revived the summer high school journalism conferences at the U. But his most notable impact was his work for community newspapers. From 1956 until his retirement, Sim was the chief liaison for the faculty with the weekly press across the state. He expanded his reach across the country by giving talks at weekly newspaper gatherings. He also restarted the state tour of weekly newspaper offices in 1958. Sim’s book, “The Grass Roots Press: America’s Community Newspapers,” studied the role of weeklies and speculated about their future in the journalism community. It examined the community press’s role as a social instrument as well, further exemplifying his commitment to the field. After his and fellow community press advocate Walter Brovald’s passing, the School established the Brovald-Sim Community Journalism Practicum 
(see Winter 2022 issue) in their honor, which still runs today. Students spend a semester doing hands-on journalism work and studies around a specific and underrepresented community. 

Jane Kirtley
A member of three state bars, Jane Kirtley has served as an honored law professor at three universities and given more lectures than will fit on the Silha Center website. Her last two decades at the Hubbard School and the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law are rife with her dedication to press freedom. “Professor Kirtley,” said Scott Memmel, one of her former graduate students and now assistant professor at the School, “has taught First Amendment values and principles to the current and future leaders in mass communication, law, and a number of other industries/areas, a legacy that cannot be overstated.” After receiving her bachelor’s and master’s in journalism, Kirtley worked at a few newspapers before returning to school to earn her J.D. in 1979. She went on to practice law in New York and D.C. Quickly developing a specialty in press freedom, she started as executive director of the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Virginia, in 1984. She left that position in 1999 to join the University of Minnesota. 

Kirtley joined the School as the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law and assumed the directorship of the Silha Center as well. In 2004, she became an affiliate faculty at the U’s law school. She’s written friends-of-court briefs for state courts, federal courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2013, the U.S. State Department published her book, Media Law Handbook, which is available in 10 languages.   Including her adjunct professorship at the Notre Dame London Law program in 2012, universities globally recognize her reputation, and she’s spoken in Brazil, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand and more. In 2015, she was made a Fulbright Scholar and taught U.S. media law and media ethics on the law faculty at the University of Latvia in Riga for one academic term. “In speaking with media outlets from around the world,” Memmel said, “Professor Kirtley helps inform the public and hold the powerful accountable by providing her expertise and knowledge of crucially important topics … that implicate all of us.” In addition to her time abroad, her work in the U.S. is also weighty. She serves on several scholarly journals’ editorial boards, and on the Society of Professional Journalists Foundation board. She currently teaches Mass Communication Law alongside a few other courses at the School—Memmel cites that as her principal impact. Her list of awards is lengthy and includes her induction into the National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame as a founding member in 1996, being named a First Amendment Fellow by the National Press Club in 2000, and receiving the “Pioneer Award” from the National Scholastic Press Association in 2011. Kirtley continues to direct the Silha Center and is responsible for multiple lectures and panels each year.

Phillip Tichenor
Phillip Tichenor began his teaching career in 1956 as an instructor and extension information specialist at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Agriculture. In 1965, he earned a doctorate in mass communication research from Stanford University. Tichenor joined the University of Minnesota journalism faculty the same year and accepted a joint appointment in Rural Sociology. He became Director of Graduate Studies in 1986. During his 30 years at the School, Tichenor taught public opinion, science writing, media and social change, and opinion writing. His research, on media distribution of knowledge and the community press, along with sociologists George Donohue and Clarice Olien, was known internationally. The three earned worldwide recognition for coining the phrase “knowledge gap” in the 1970s. In 1994, this “Minnesota team,” as it was known, received the Paul J. Deutschmann Award for outstanding contributions to research from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. After retirement, Tichenor wrote “Athena’s Forum,” a novel about an immigrant journalist and his family on the Minnesota prairie during the decade prior to World War I. He also wrote “13 Days at Andersonville: The Trial of the Raiders and Civil War P.O.W.”

Nancy Roberts
Nancy Roberts (M.A. ’79, Ph.D. ’82) taught at the School for 25 years. She was an Honors advisor, as well as the Director of Undergraduate Studies from 1997-2003. Roberts published multiple articles and edited multiple newsletters during her time at the U. She is the editor and author, along with the late Professor Edwin Emery and Michael Emery, of “The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media,” which is considered to be a leading work on the history of media in the United States. Roberts received the Pax Christi USA Book Award in 1997 for her and St. Thomas Professor Anne Klejment’s book “Catholic Pacifism: The Influence of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement.” She’s been a book reviewer and a freelance journalist and is currently a professor in the journalism program and communication department at the University of Albany.

In the ’90s Roberts served as a consultant to the Freedom Forum, the nonprofit organization that financed the creation of the Newseum, which opened in Rosslyn, Va., in 1997. The museum held everything from video galleries and TV news studios to hands-on exhibits and national and international newspaper collections, with a goal to highlight the development of news, past and present, and the history of mass communications. Roberts specifically helped narrow down the list of featured journalists and select the various communication artifacts displayed, such as ancient tablets, a drum, and typewriters. The Newseum eventually moved to Washington D.C. in 2008 and then after 11 years, and nearly 10 million visitors, the Newseum closed to the public on Dec. 31, 2019. Its digital work remains through newseum.org and its traveling exhibits.

Running the Main Office

• JOAN BOWMAN: Staff at Murphy Hall called Joan Bowman “irreplaceable” when she retired after 28 years at the School. She started in 1958, before digital records were kept for students and graduates, and kept physical personnel files for 350 students by herself in the ’50s and ’60s. She was even in charge of typing out alumni notes and stencils for the mimeographed Murphy Reporters until the 1970s.
• MARY ANN LUKANEN: During Mary Ann Lukanen’s 35 years in Murphy Hall, she worked on anything with numbers. Called the “heart of the school” by former administrative assistant Linda Wilson, Lukanen said her main job was to keep the School out of dollar trouble with the college. Though the sign on her door said “the wicked witch lives here,” after her sudden passing, many missed her gruff but humorous personality.
• LINDA WILSON: When Linda Wilson retired from the School after 18 years, the Murphy Reporter called it a “major change.” Wilson said she valued her time at the university as it allowed her to both meet her husband and raise her daughter. As she retired to relax and travel, Wilson said her time at the School was one of the most important in her life and had created lasting friendships she treasured.
• MARY ACHARTZ HAVERTY: Mary Haverty worked in Murphy Hall for 37 years as secretary, senior secretary, and executive administrative assistant. She served seven directors: F. Gerald Kline, Mary Ann Yodelis Smith, Dan Wackman, Robert Scott, Al Tims, Jane Kirtley, and Elisia Cohen. “I met so many wonderful faculty, staff, and students who have remained good friends,” Haverty said. “I think that really says how great the School is. I always considered it my second family. I can’t imagine my life without all of my j-school memories, friends, and events.”

*Editor's Note: So many people have been instrumental to the Hubbard School in the last 100 years. This list is not exhaustive, and it will be added to throughout 2022. If you want to make sure we don't forget anyone, please share your memories with us!