Call for Applications

Background:
The purpose of the Institute for Diverse Leadership in Journalism and Communication is to increase racial, gender and ethnic diversity in administrative and other senior-level positions in journalism and communication education. The Institute’s objective is to identify, recruit, mentor and train future leaders and administrators. The Institute is co-sponsored by AEJMC and the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Applicants MUST BE current AEJMC members. Applicants must be associate or full professors interested in administration and/or journalism and communication practitioners who have moved into the academy and have a minimum of three full-time years in an academic setting. The program is for people of color and women.

Fellows will participate in Institute activities while continuing to work at their home campuses. The Institute program involves five group sessions during the fellowship year, two of which will happen during AEJMC conferences. Fellows and their home institutions are expected to cover costs associated with travel to those two AEJMC annual conferences, which most members normally attend. Travel for the other three trips will be funded by the Institute.

Components:
There are three key components of the Institute:

• Workshop Sessions — Mandatory workshops for fellows will be held at the AEJMC 2020 San Francisco Conference, the 2021 ASJMC winter workshop, the 2021 ACEJMC Spring meeting and the AEJMC 2021 New Orleans Conference. Workshops will cover a variety of administrative issues, including fundraising, leadership styles and dealing with difficult people.
• Mentor Program — The Institute will match each fellow with a current administrative mentor. The mentoring relationship consists of monthly contact via telephone or email, and a week-long visit to the mentor’s campus for a first-hand look at administrative duties at a journalism/communication program.
• Networking — Institute fellows are introduced to current administrators during social and programming sessions at their workshops. Mentors introduce fellows to other administrators to help the fellows begin to establish networks of resources.

Application Process:
AEJMC expects the selection process to be competitive. Applications for the 2020-21 year of the Institute should include ONE PDF file that includes the following parts:

Part I. An “Institute Application” that answers the following questions:

1. Why would this program be valuable to you now — at this stage of your career?
2. What skills and past leadership experience do you have?
3. Why would you like to become an administrator or have a leadership position in higher education?
4. What would you like to learn from the program if you were selected?
5. What do you see as the most pressing issue for JC administrators today, and what two ideas do you have that would help?

Part II. A vita, maximum of 5 pages. Vita should include: • current position, rank and number of years of teaching;
• summary of professional experience;
• leadership positions and significant service contributions to department, university, AEJMC and other academic associations; • maximum listing of 10 publications, presentations and awards (total of 10 for all three).

Part III. Two letters of recommendation. One letter should be from your immediate chair or dean, and one should come from another person familiar with your work. The letter of nomination from the immediate chair or dean must indicate the institution will provide funding for the candidate to attend the two required AEJMC annual conferences if the person is selected for the program.

The complete packet should be converted to a PDF and emailed to: AEJMCnews@aol.com. The file should be called: AEJMC_Institute_(your last name). All application materials should be received by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, March 16. Only complete applications will be considered. The selection process is very competitive. Up to eight fellows will be selected for the 2020-21 class. Notifications will go out by late April. Direct questions to Jennifer McGill at Jennifer@aejmc.org. Type “Institute Inquiry” in subject line.

<AEJMC Calls

Tips for Creating That Perfect Research Grant Proposal from 2019 AEJMC Senior and Emerging Scholars:

Senior Scholar Daniela Dimitrova, Iowa State University

• This may be obvious but … try to follow the grant application guidelines closely, including section headings, fonts and formatting, as well as page length.
• Clearly state the expected contributions of your research, both theoretical and practical. That will help the reviewers see the significance of your project and answer the “so what” question.

Senior Scholar Lawrence Pintak, Washington State University

• Keep it simple, stupid. A grant proposal is a term paper, not a dissertation. Make it focused and clear. What are the one or two key outcomes?
• Why do you need the money? We all like cash but be very clear exactly how you are going to spend it. Collaborator meetings? Data gathering? Conference presentations? RA support?
• Why should we care? An awful lot of academic research is, well, purely academic. What impact does your research have on the wider world? How does it advance the ball within the field?

Emerging Scholar Jeanine Guidry, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Write a proposal you are passionate about. It’s easier to write and your passion will shine through.
• Collaborate. With people from your own department, other departments, other universities. Your strengths will likely complement each other.
• Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get a grant funded. Rework it, reformat it – and resubmit it.

Emerging Scholars Karen McIntyre, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Meghan Sobel, Regis University

• Make the reviewers’ jobs easy by preparing your application in an organized fashion that makes it easy to read. For example, use subheadings to specifically address required parts of the application, such as “How the project will expand knowledge.” This way the reviewers can easily see how you have addressed each required element of the application.
• Be sure your project is doable. Perhaps our application was successful because we showed that we had already started our project and were therefore confident that we could complete the remaining part in the designated time frame. Setting realistic goals will allow the reviewers to feel more comfortable that you will indeed reach those goals.

Emerging Scholar Lindsay Palmer, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Make sure you respond to each, individual element of the call for proposals. It is so easy to overlook one of the questions that the proposal call asks, or to focus too heavily on one aspect rather than on the others. But your proposal should answer each of the questions raised in the call.
• Make sure you situate your research within the broader context of journalism and mass communication today (or in the past, if you’re doing historical work). You want your topic to be specific and unique, but you also want to make sure that people outside your sub-field can understand why your topic matters, on a “big picture” level.

Emerging Scholar Jason T. Peifer, Indiana University

• A piece of advice I heeded from one of last year’s Emerging Scholar Grant recipients was to take a look at the successful applications of prior awardees. I emailed three past recipients and each graciously shared their application materials. While each application was distinct, in terms of content and style, taken together they proved to be useful for helping me sharpen my vision for how I wanted to propose my project. In short, don’t hesitate to reach out to past recipients.
• Another strategy I prioritized in my application was to explicitly frame the proposal within the broader trajectory of my research. Of course, the application instructions ask for a 200-word bio and a CV, but I aimed to go beyond presenting those basic elements by briefly explaining how my proposal fits within and augments an existing program of research. Given the Emerging Scholars Program’s mission to identify and encourage promising emerging scholars, it’s worth making an argument for why you are “promising” and your work builds on existing research momentum.
• Because the application calls for a letter of support from an immediate supervisor, I also think it’s a good idea to devote some time to helping your supervisor get a strong handle on the scope and vision of the proposal.  Avoid the pitfall of requesting the letter of support last minute, which can be a recipe for a vague and uninspiring endorsement. While the proposal itself is most important, an informed and enthusiastic letter of support should only help the application.

AEJMC 2019 Conference
Toronto, Canada – August 7-10
By Samantha Higgins, AEJMC Communications Director

App Stats

App Downloads– 881

App Sessions– 40,323 (number of times people accessed the guide)

App Top 10 Menu Items:
My Schedule – 7,610 launches
Conference Program – 4,337 launches
Conference General Info – 2,658 launches
Sessions by Group (DIG’s) – 736 launches
Maps – 658 launches
Inbox – 566 launches
QR Game – 426 launches
Interact – 335 launches
Conference Website – 311 launches
Social Media – 297 launches

QR Game Completions– 5

Social Media Stats

Tweets– 1,739 Twitter Accounts used #AEJMC19 from August 5 – August 14, 2019

Top Account– @AEJMC was the top account followed by @smandpbot, @jeremylittau and @aejmc_prd

Top 4 #:
#AEJMC19
#prprofs
#aejmc2019
#toronto

More twitter stats can be found here:
https://nodexlgraphgallery.org/Pages/Graph.aspx?graphID=206791

Instagram– increased engagement on Instagram both in posts, stories and reposting members stories and using video engagement.

Conference Playlist– First ever conference playlist this year on Spotify!

Documenting and Demonstrating Quality Teaching

By Amanda Sturgill
AEJMC Standing Committee on Teaching
Elon University
asturgill@elon.edu

 

 

(Article courtesy of AEJMC News, July 2019 issue)

When applying for jobs or for tenure and promotion, quality teaching can be one of the hardest things to document. There are no impact factors or well-understood committees, and the burden is on you to demonstrate that your methods are effective.

Here are some tips for assembling a teaching dossier.

1. Teaching is not one-size-fits-all, and you should be able to articulate the values that you prize as an educator. If this is hard for you, try answering the following questions:

•  What do you think is the best way to learn?

•  How do you know the students have successfully?

•  If students can take away only one big-picture idea from a course with you, what do you want that idea to be?

The answers to these questions can help you identify what you value as a teacher, or what you can call your teaching philosophy. It is helpful to have a written and memorized “elevator pitch” about your teaching philosophy before heading onto the job market.

2. Assemble multiple types of evidence. Student evaluations can be helpful but can also be problematic. They are one type of evidence; they should not be the only evidence you give.

Other helpful types include:

•  Syllabi and assignments you have created

•  Student works, particularly if you use revision and have before and after versions that show how your students progressed over time

•  Evidence that students succeed in using what you have taught them. This can be in the form of letters from graduates about how they use what they learned in your class on the job or notes from colleagues who teach higher-level classes based on what students learned from you that speak to their preparation.

•  Judgements of student works such as reviews of papers or creative works or even awards. It can pay off to encourage your students to submit for awards, conferences and other places where their work will be reviewed.

3. Contextualize. Even if you are speaking to colleagues in your own department, you can’t assume they know the particularities of what you do. I teach in a multidisciplinary communication department, for example, and my colleagues in film have to explain their field in order for me to understand why their techniques are important.

When you write it up, remember the audience for your documentation. Whether it is a job application or a promotion review, administrators and possibly faculty in other fields will be looking at your evidence and need to be able to understand it. The “explain it to your mom” method you might use in a communication class can come in handy here.

4. It’s ok to grow, but it needs to show. New classes are often rough the first time, and sometimes the mix of students in a course makes it really challenging. You may try different things, tweaking an assignment or dropping an activity that went over poorly.

Remember to make notes of the things that you do and why you do them. These will help you later as you document your ability to think as critically about your teaching as you do about your scholarship.

5. When it comes to peer observations, help the observer understand what you are doing. It’s common to be required to have a peer or administrator observe a class, particularly as a student instructor or pre-tenure. These observations and the write-up from them goes much better if you prepare the observer for what he or she will be seeing. It’s helpful to sit down with the observer before the class to look at the syllabus, describe the general purpose and arc of the course and to describe what you will be doing that day and how that fits into that arc. You can also prepare the students by letting them know the class before that an observer will be visiting so that they will act as they usually do.

Demonstrating quality teaching is telling a story about who you are and what you have done. Tell a good one.

<Teaching Corner