One of the best things about being a Department Chair is that I get a good sense of the scope and quality of research, teaching, and service contributions by all of our faculty, staff and students. I can see much more of the full field of our activities than I could glimpse as an individual faculty member before becoming Chair. From this vista, here’s what I know: We have a group of truly superb and diverse people in our community.

I want to take a moment to share just one insight.

In the past couple months I have written letters in support of three departmental faculty for two
prestigious campus awards.

• Malcolm Parks was nominated for the Marsha Landolt Graduate Mentoring Award, which is given annually to a UW faculty member who has made outstanding contributions to the education and guidance of graduate students.

• Matt McGarrity and Ralina Joseph were nominated for the Distinguished Teaching Award, which is given annually to a very small number of faculty who have made exceptional contributions to instruction and engagement of students.

The competition for these awards is very stiff. Nominations are usually put forward by students, and the nomination is an honor in itself, regardless of who ultimately receives the award. In my four-plus years as Chair, several other departmental faculty have been nominated for these honors as well — Valerie Manusov, Ralina Joseph, and Lisa Coutu for the Landolt Mentoring Award, and Randy Beam, Usha McFarling, and Laura McGarrity for the Distinguished Teaching Award. Over time, we have received a number of campus-wide awards (a list of the kinds of awards is here), and I believe Communication may have the most currently active recipients of the Distinguished Teaching Award of any unit on campus.

Whenever we put forward nominations, I collect letters of support by students (current and former) and faculty colleagues, at UW and elsewhere. And I read the materials prepared by our nominees as part of their portfolios. We go through a pretty similar process when we hire, promote, and reappoint colleagues. In all instances, I get to read people’s descriptions of their work and thinking, and also to read others’ impressions of these folks.

Here is what I have learned: One of our core departmental principles is excellence through cultural and intellectual pluralism, and we have become exactly this kind of community.

Every day I see faculty colleagues who pursue distinct routes to being outstanding educators that
are vastly different in approach — and yet I see remarkably similar outcomes of educational pursuit and support, growth, and success for our students. Across social scientific and humanistic
approaches, with points of focus on a number of face to face and mediated contexts, and employing countless techniques of research and teaching and service, we provide a robust intellectual environment.

I see the same diversity of approaches with yet the same deep commitments among our staff.

Maybe I’m just feeling upbeat because we have seven — seven! — new faculty hires joining us in autumn. Or because we’re about to hire a “Department Storyteller” staff member who will focus 24/7 on the compelling things going on in the Department. Or because we raised $38,000 at our student fundraiser in April. Or because our new Communication Leadership master’s program and our academic Ph.D. program both received a stunning number of applications by potential students. Or because we’re creating a new Communication Commons gathering place in the building, to be unveiled in late summer.

That is a lot of good things, and there are many more. But here’s what I know: all of our successes are grounded, in some significant way, in the remarkable range of perspectives and approaches among faculty, staff, and students. To be both diverse and superb are uncompromise-able and intertwined goals for us.

Josh Henderson of Skillet and Hanson Hosein

Many exciting changes are underway for Four Peaks TV, created in conjunction with the MCDM. Dubbed a monthly current affairs show, Four Peaks TV connects to creatives, activists, entreprenuers, and storytellers from the Pacific Northwest. This year brings more student involvement, a change in format, and an exciting new partnership with Northwest Cable News.

This season’s first episode will premiere on Saturday, November 10th at 4 p.m. on NWCN. which is a sister station to Seattle’s KING 5. The show will be shown again no Sunday, November 11th at 5 p.m and is also featured on UWTV on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Previous episodes can also be found on their website.

The first episode will feature Josh Henderson of Skillet, a local food truck that turned into multiple Seattle restaurants famous for comfort food and bacon jam. In this episode, Four Peaks TV host Hanson Hosein will find out more about Henderson’s secret recipe for sucesss, including his effective use of social media.

Hosein is the director of the MCDM at the University of Washington, but in a previous life was a journalist for outlets including NBC News and MSNBC.com.

Skillet Seattle Center

The show started as Media Space in 2010 and focused specifically on media and technology. In 2011, the show got a facelift with a new name (Four Peaks), and a broader focus on innovation in the Pacific Northwest and its effect on the world. This season brought more twists, with new featured segments, including one called Teach Hanson where each guest shows him how to do something, and expanding the MCDM’s program offerings to bring in more student involvement through a production studio class.

The second episode of the season will air Saturday, November 17 at 4 p.m. and Sunday, November 18 at 5 p.m., with the third episode the following Saturday and Sunday at the same times respectively.

You can connect with Four Peaks TV on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Recent alumnus Brett Bowker (B.A., 2010) is bringing us his first film as a producer and cinematographer called “The Long Ride Home.” The film premiered last year at the Seattle International Film Festival earning a ‘Best of Fest’ selection, and also winning at the Santa Rosa International Film Festival VetsFest.

The special screening will take place in CMU 120 on Wednesday, May 15 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. with a Q&A session with Bowker and director Thomas Lee Wright immediately following the film.

Synopsis: In 2001, Kevin Mincio was an up-and-coming Goldman Sachs vice president with an office at 1 Liberty Plaza (next door to the World Trade Center) when the first plane hit the tower. In an instant, his life was transformed. He put his promising career on hold to enlist in the Army and was assigned at Fort Lewis, Washington, to America’s first Stryker Brigade. Deployed to Iraq, Mincio was assigned as a reconnaissance scout in the 5-20 Infantry Battalion. Though he would eventually come home, his Army buddy, Staff Sgt. Jesse Williams, would not be as fortunate. Sgt. Mincio made a vow to help care for Williams’ daughter and family, and later to do all he could for the families of fallen soldiers. With those goals in mind, he started the Team Jesse Foundation, and launched fundraising efforts like “The Ride,” a challenging bicycle trip of 4,200 miles over 95 days aiming to arrive at Ground Zero on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. “The Long Ride Home” is the story of that ride – and of Kevin Mincio’s personal quest to honor the sacred promise he made to a friend and fellow soldier.

Bios:

Brett Bowker earned his B.A. in journalism at the University of Washington in 2010. After graduation he traveled to Europe and China. Having worked in lacrosse reporting in Washington State for several years, he discovered the story of Team Jesse and spearheaded the transcontinental filming effort as producer and cinematographer. “The Long Ride Home” is his first film of the beginning of a promising career.

Thomas Lee Wright (director, producer, writer) has been making socially-conscious documentaries for more than 20 years, ranging from the definitive film “Trade Off” about the WTO protests in Seattle, which won the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Documentary at SIFF 2000 and toured with the International Human Rights Watch Festival, to an investigation of gangs during the 1992 LA riots called “Eight-Tray Gangster: The Making of a Crip,” which the Hollywood Reporter called “more sympathetic and frightening than any film on the subject.” It also premiered at the American Film Institute Festival and aired on the Discovery Channel.

Please register to attend this free event >>

The bulk of the Screen Summit will be an opportunity for our students to present their work on the screen of their choice, be it smart phone, tablet, or laptop. The work they present could be a particular project they are especially proud of, or a culminating portfolio of their best work from their time in the Communication Leadership program. The focus will be on mingling and networking with alumni, faculty, and community members, with each student presenter stationed at a table (think poster session with screens instead of posters).

Learn more by visiting our website: www.cl.uw.edu

What should we Tweet? What can we tell the public? Should we release the shooter’s name? Has the victim’s family been notified? Where’s the press conference? Is the shooter dead? Are students safe? Should we show photos of a dead body? What resources are there to protect our journalists’ emotional and mental state?

These are all questions that rang around the room as 20 journalism and public relations students, along with some of The Daily staff, grappled with a realistic simulation of a campus shooting. The students were split up into groups of editors, visual journalists, reporters, and crisis communicators and each sector had their own qualified mentor. The groups were given a piece of paper containing different facts at each of the three phases. Some phases included updates that intensified the decision making.

Seattle police reporter for The Seattle Times Sara Jean Green assisted the reporter group. Green was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for Breaking News Reporting during the 2009 Lakewood shooting that left four police officers dead.

Assistant Metro Editor for crime and justice at The Times John de Leon helped the editors, including editor-in-chief of The Daily Sarah Schweppe.

“It was great to get advice from professional journalists on how to handle sensitive situations,” Schweppe said. “I also enjoyed the discussion of the importance of getting the most accurate information out to the public, even if it means being a few minutes later than other outlets. Making ethical decisions on a time crunch can be difficult, and I think the exercise helped us work through what that’s like.”

Schweppe related the simulation to decisions made last year at The Daily during the Cafe Racer incident. She said it was interesting to look back at how they handled it well and what they could have done better.

The crisis communicator group was joined by associate vice president of media relations and communications at the UW Norm Arkans, and by Commander Steve Rittereiser of the UW Police Department. The group had to prepare a press conference at the end and answer questions from the reporters. Rittereiser was able to provide valuable insight about how many officers would likely be at the scene and what areas would probably be taped off.

Alumna Kellie Cheadle (B.A., 1996), multiplatform content manager at KING-TV, worked with the visual journalists and was able to give recent advice from the Federal Way shooting.

“Covering breaking news is not for the faint of heart,” she said. “It requires quick thinking and solid judgment. I was very impressed by the students who participated. They asked great questions and knew how to use social media to gather and disseminate information.”

In the new world of journalism, updates are made by the second. Cheadle said the one question everyone should always ask in breaking news situations is ‘how do we know that?’

Former editor of The Times Mike Fancher did a debriefing at the end of the training on ethical issues. Emeritus professor Roger Simpson, who taught journalism ethics here for many years, was also present to offer advice.

A special thanks goes out to Diana Kramer, who planned and ran the workshop, and Professor Randy Beam, who helped with planning.

-By Erica Thompson

Are you graduating soon? The Association for Women in Communications, Seattle Professional Chapter offers a peer mentoring group for specifically for those just starting out in the work force. You are welcome to attend our Emerging Professionals Affinity Group to network and learn from your peers are you begin to build your career. In this structured setting, the group will establish its own goals and ways to help each other measure their progress. Established AWC members will also drop by from time to time to present on topics relevant to career-building, networking, and professional growth. Meetings are held every third Monday at The Pine Box on Capitol Hill. Interested in finding out more? Contact Almeera Anwar, Group Facilitator, at almeerama@hotmail.com.

Throughout the year, AWC hosts events, webinars, and workshops by communication leaders to explore current trends, help members sharpen their skills, and provide valuable networking opportunities. Interested in joining? Learn more here and watch for our special membership drive this June! While founded as a women’s professional organization, AWC membership and events are open to anyone who is interested in networking with communications professionals and relevant professional development.

Nautilus: A cephalopod mollusk with a chambered, coiled, pearly shell. They have up to 94 suckerless tentacles and use jet propulsion to traverse the oceans.

Learning about different cultures, English, writing, and science are all interests of journalism student Deanna Isaacs; and she found a way to bring them all together by producing documentaries.

Isaacs began writing for The Daily after becoming a journalism major. It was during her second article that involved biology professor Peter Ward that wheels started to turn about becoming a documentarian. Ward was inspired by a talk given by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about a mysterious marine creature called the Nautilus, of which they did a three-year study finding that more than 500,000 shells were being imported to the U.S. alone for material purposes. Ward has traveled to Australia, the Philippines, and America Samoa to conduct research on these squid-like cephalopods. He’s going back to the Philippines in June and asked Isaacs to come along as the expedition’s communication person.

The Nautilus, a marine creature that not many know about, is the subject of a documentary being created by journalism undergraduate Deanna Isaacs, along with two other students and in partnership with UW biology professor Peter Ward.

“This film is not just about a disappearing sea creature that many haven’t heard of,” Isaacs wrote, “it is about humans and their impact on the world – what we destroy, we can also save. It is about people. We have caused its precarious situation, now it is time to spread the word about the Plight of the Nautilus and what people are doing to end it.”

Isaacs created a Kickstarter campaign to support her efforts in bringing awareness to and stopping the plight of the Nautilus, and hopes to enter the Sundance Film Festival in July 2014.

It sounds controversial, right? Well that’s kind of the point. The UW Master of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM) program announced the official launch of Let’s Have Dinner and Talk about Death, “a project created to foster proactive and constructive conversations about end-of-life decisions,” bringing to the forefront a topic that is not frequently talked about.

The discussion takes place around an actual dinner table, while students and healthcare professionals eat an organic meal, sip on wine, and one more thing…talk about human life and death. The idea began with Michael Hebb, inaugural MCDM Teaching Fellow, and MCDM Associate Director Scott Macklin in their effort to “rethink the role the internet plays in embodied human experience.”

With only 25 percent of Americans dying at home when 70 percent say they would prefer to, and more than half of Medicare dollars being spent on the last two months of patients’ lives, Hebb said, “It is clear that sharing our preferences for what we’d like at the end of our life is the more important – and costly – conversation that Americans are not having.”

Check out their website (a full interactive version is being launched in the summer of 2013) and follow them on Twitter @deathoverdinner to stay updated on future developments. It has also just been announced that Hebb will speak about the program at TEDMED 2013 on April 18 in Washington, D.C.

When students think about UW’s journalism program, one particular lecturer comes to mind. This educator is Mike Henderson, known for his unique sense of humor and ability to impart knowledge to students, thereby creating better writers. After a 19-year tenure, Henderson has decided to retire from teaching at the University of Washington.

Writing and contributing to news sources has been second nature to Henderson throughout the years. “I’ve worked for professional news organizations for parts of every year since 1964,” Henderson said. Close to where he grew up in the suburbs of Portland, his first writing opportunity was sports reporting for The Valley Times in Beaverton, Oregon. While attending college at the University of Oregon, Henderson worked for the Eugene Register-Guard.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree, Henderson took his talent north to Alaska to contribute to The Anchorage Times from 1971-72. During those years, he was also the Alaska correspondent for Reuters.

When the time in Anchorage ran its course, Henderson found himself in Seattle for the first time where he was the editor of the Sunday culture magazine, Arts and Book World for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. This was where he met his wife, Pat Foote, the very day he started, August 14, 1972. A year later, his duties shifted as he became the arts/entertainment editor and film critic.

By 1978, Henderson left the Seattle P-I and went on to The Seattle Times where he was an editor on the news desk and contributor to the Sunday magazine. By 1980, The Herald of Everett offered a job to Henderson. It was at this time, while their careers flourished, Henderson and Foote found their sense of home in the Northwest.

“I aspired to join the Washington Post but my wife was entrenched in her career at The Seattle Times, so we didn’t seriously consider leaving the Northwest,” he said.

At The Herald, Henderson busied himself with multiple positions. He was a general columnist, food and restaurant critic, and magazine writer. His writings were published five to six times weekly. “Two years worth of my food columns were adapted for a cookbook, a copy of which surfaced last summer at a garage sale in Wenatchee, where it was purchased by a former student,” he said.

A number of Henderson’s columns have appeared in newspapers throughout North America. Non-local-interest content was picked up for distribution by big name news sources such as The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News Service. Henderson also had a column published in The Japan Times. “I wish I’d been paid extra for these secondary publications, but alas.”

In 1993, Henderson left the staff at The Herald but continued to write on contract until 2002 when he switched to The Seattle Weekly, writing mainly about sports. By 1994, Henderson was hired to teach at the UW.  His decision to begin a teaching career stemmed from an old college goal. This included “being a newspaper film critic, a columnist, and a teacher at the college level,” Henderson explained. “I’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunities to accomplish all three.”

In 2006, Henderson, along with some of his friends from The Seattle Weekly, left the publication to start Crosscut.com, a Seattle-based online-only news and opinion resource. Three days after the website went live, his first contribution was published online. Since 2006, he contributed a weekly post until the summer of 2012.

Henderson takes pride in how he is one of only two journalists to have written for all of the Northwest publications. In addition, he has been published in The Tacoma News Tribune and the Bellevue Journal-American.

Aside from print media, Henderson has written two novels - “The Destiny Star” and “The Obligatory Year.” In 1995, Henderson also co-wrote a nonfiction book titled “Why I am an Abortion Doctor” with his friend Dr. Suzanne Poppema. “Suzanne and I will always be proud that she summoned the courage at a difficult and dangerous time to tell her story,” Henderson said. “We were pleased that the book was well-reviewed by such publications as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and Ms. Magazine.”

Henderson has contributed heavily in his teaching career at the UW. Most years he’s taught eight to ten courses, including summer quarter. In 2007, Henderson got involved in the Department of Communication’s Rome program, teaching a cultural matters course that covered food, cinema, and travel.

For the past decade, Henderson has overseen the Olympia Legislative Reporting Internship Program. “I put it together in nine of the past 12 years. I select students and match them with news organizations. I also arrange information sessions prior to the Legislature convening,” he said. “During Winter Quarter I travel to Olympia at least twice a week to convene with student reporters, if they require it. I also make myself available to give first edits when requested, so I typically handle about six stories per week and offer advice via phone and email.”

For the past 10 years, Henderson has also co-taught an opinion-writing course with a Seattle Times journalist each fall quarter. “I’ve taught it every year except 2011. Four Seattle Times professionals of my acquaintance have co-taught at least once, but Joni Balter, a superb columnist and editor, has done so exclusively since 2006. I teach the first half of the quarter, covering reviewing/criticism and editorial-writing. Joni then takes over and addresses column-writing,” he explained.

“I’m proud to note that I’ve never used a textbook of any kind, but have collected many and I genuinely wish someone would come to my office and take them away,” Henderson said. “I’m also extremely proud of many former students who have gone on to impressive careers. I keep in touch with a number of them.”

At the request of the former Chair, Tony Giffard, in 1998 Henderson put together a course for non-journalism majors – Writing for Mass Media. This course will be taught by Henderson for the 60^th and final time during the summer of 2013.

Henderson plans on using his time for volunteer work after he retires from the UW. “As long as the work has no heavy-lifting,” he says. He also mentioned that he and his wife plan to travel out of the country more often. He enjoys playing golf, watching a lot of movies, reading with his e-reader and spending quality time with kids Will (33, a chef) and Jenna (30, an attorney) and friends such as his dogs Keller and Sparky.

Senior journalism student Erin Flemming offered her thoughts about her experience under the tutelage of Henderson. Flemming has completed two courses with Henderson as well as the Olympia program.

“It was cool to get to know him outside of the classroom setting. I know he has my back. He’s a real go-to guy and he’s very reliable and supportive,” she said.

“Anyone who knows him is well aware of his sarcasm,” said Marika Price, another former student. “While his sharp wit and deep voice are definitely intimidating, Mike is by far the most caring teacher. It’s not until you leave his classroom that you realize how much you have learned.”

Henderson intends to continue to be a good friend to the Department of Communication. He offered his thoughts on his retirement.

“Having worked professionally parts of every year for nearly half a century, I’d say I’m an excellent candidate for retirement. I’ll be well-occupied ghost-writing on a blog for a progressive organization,” he said. “What I value the most about the work? I’d say that it’s the fact that I’ve been afforded the chance to meet many (mostly) young people I otherwise never would’ve gotten to know.”

Congratulations on your retirement, Mike. We will miss you.

-BY CHRIS DUCLOS