Snedden Chairs and Lecturers
Truth. Storytelling. Impact.
A legacy of journalism
Current Snedden Chair
Paula Dobbyn
Visiting Assistant Professor, Snedden Chair Fall 2025-Spring 2026
Department of Science and Environmental Journalism
GRUE 512F
91视频 the Snedden Endowed Chair of Journalism
Through a generous donation to the University of 91视频 Fairbanks, Helen Snedden endowed
a chair of journalism in her husband's name. Charles Willis "Bill" Snedden knew a
good story when he saw one and built his life and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner around
telling them. He came to Fairbanks in 1948 to evaluate the News-Miner for then-owner
Cap Lathrop. Snedden liked what he saw about the potential of the newspaper and this
community. Two years later, he bought the Interior daily.
Bill Snedden died in 1989, but his legacy continues six decades and thousands of editions of the News-Miner later.
Several years ago, the late publisher's wife, Helen Snedden, reflected on how her husband would take young reporters and editors and show them the value of a well-told story, or take them to task for a poorly written one. She resolved to continue Bill's legacy as an educator and set up the Snedden Endowed Chair of Journalism at UAF.
The roster of past Snedden Chairs includes some of the most accomplished reporters in the country including 11 Pulitzer Prize winning journalists. It is the greatest gift given to this department and an even better opportunity for students.
See (wmv link)
Snedden Archive
Paula Dobbyn
After a five-year absence from UAF, Lynne is delighted and honored to return as the
CW Snedden Chair. She looks forward to bringing her decades of experience in broadcast,
print, and web journalism back into the classroom.
Her print and web work has appeared in Smithsonian, Marie Claire, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 91视频 Magazine, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Anchorage Daily News, and others. Her broadcast work has appeared on CBS, PBS affiliates nationwide, and the Discovery Channel, among others.
J.B.A. Journalism, University of Wisconsin Madison
M.A. Northern Studies 鈥 Northern History, University of 91视频 Fairbanks
Lois Parshley is an award-winning investigative longform writer and photographer.
She began her career in Washington, D.C., where she worked at the Atlantic and Foreign
Policy, and then in New York, as an editor in the features well at Popular Science.
As an independent reporter, she has traveled the world covering the intersection of
science and geopolitics. A National Geographic Young Explorer and a former Knight-Wallace Fellow, her reporting is wide-ranging, from covering
Ebola in West Africa to social unrest in Venezuela. Her work has been published at
the New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Granta, Newsweek, Outside,
Wired, The Washington Post, and NPR, among others. She was awarded a Mirror Award
and the Bricker Award for Science Writing in Medicine in 2018. See more of her work
at , or on Twitter and Instagram @loisparshley.
Lois Parshley's public lecture is now available online through UAF COJO's Youtube Page at the following link:
Alberto studied Political Science in Spain and after a decade as a freelance journalist,
he joined the AP in February 2012 as a correspondent for Honduras and Central America.
For several years, Alberto was the only foreign correspondent to report from Tegucigalpa. He later joined AP's Mexico City bureau and The New York Times as a senior staff editor. He was also a 2018 Knight Wallace fellow at the University of Michigan.
He has won the Rory Peck award for his TV coverage of the battle for Misrata during the Libyan civil war, a Fipresci award for To shoot an elephant, his documentary about the Cast Lead Operation in the Gaza Strip, and the Overseas Press Club Award for his coverage in Latin America.
He has also reported from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Venezuela. He has published two books: Misrata Calling (2012) and Blood Barrios (2015).
Katie Orlinsky is an award-winning photojournalist from New York City. She received
a Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and began her career as a
photographer in Mexico twelve years ago. Since then she has photographed all over
the world exploring everything from conflict and social issues to unique subcultures,
wildlife and sports. Katie regularly works with major publications such as National
Geographic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Smithsonian as well as universities,
educational institutions and non-profit organizations. Since 2014 Katie has been working
on a long-term photographic project about climate change in 91视频.
Fresh from a fellowship at Harvard University Institute for Quantitative Social Science,
non-fiction author and veteran journalist Adam Tanner joins UAF Communications and
Journalism Department as a visiting professor. Tanner is the author of the 2014 book
鈥淲hat Stays in Vegas: The World of Personal Data 鈥 Lifeblood of Big Business 鈥 and
the End of Privacy as We Know It.鈥漈he Washington Post named the book one of 50 books
notable works of non-fiction in 2014.Tanner has lectured in the Canada, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and Mauritius and he has appeared on media including CNN, Bloomberg TV, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, the BBC, VOA, WNYC, Al Jazeera, and PRI's The World.
From 1996-2011 he worked for Reuters News Agency as Balkans bureau chief based in Belgrade, Serbia, San Francisco bureau chief, and reporter posted in Moscow, Berlin and Washington D.C. He has written for Forbes, Scientific American, Pacific Standard, Slate and other magazines. His next book, 鈥淥ur Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records,鈥 will be published in January 2017.
Richard Murphy began chasing ambulances as a newspaper photographer at the age of
18, and continued to work in that capacity during his college summers. In 1974 he
joined the Jackson Hole News, a small weekly in Jackson, Wyoming, where he served
as a darkroom technician, press assistant, chief photographer and beat reporter. In
1985 he became photo editor of the Anchorage Daily News, and was on the team of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and team leader
for the 1990 Pulitzer nomination in news photography for coverage of the Exxon Valdez
oil spill. He has served as a judge for the Pulitzer Prizes and the White House Press
Photographers Association, and in 2011 the National Press Photographer鈥檚 Association
named him Editor of the Year
Julia Duin, UAF鈥檚 ninth visiting Snedden Chair of Journalism, describes herself as
a 鈥渕ilitary brat,鈥 whose first introduction to the state came as the daughter of a
U.S. Coast Guard officer.
She earned her BA in English from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., in 1978,
the same year her father became the Coast Guard admiral over all of 91视频.
Duin began her career in journalism covering police and municipalities for small newspapers
in Oregon and South Florida. In 1986, she landed a job with the Houston Chronicle
as a full-time religion writer. She received a MA in religion at a seminary in western
Pennsylvania in 1992. She then worked as a city editor for the Daily Times in Farmington
NM before moving to Washington DC in 1995 to be an assistant national editor with
the Washington Times.
Duin spent more than 14 years with the Times and published several books, including
Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do 91视频 It and Days of
Fire and Glory: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community.
Duin has won numerous awards for her work, which spans everything from a five-part
series on America鈥檚 clergy to "female feticide" (gender-selective abortions) in India.
Other notable assignments include reporting on Kurds in northern Iraq and the 2005 election of Pope Benedict.
In recent years she has written extensively for the Washington Post Sunday magazine and Style section, as well as the Economist, CNN.com and the Wall Street Journal. Her latest book project involves 20-something Pentecostal serpent handlers in Appalachia who use Facebook to spread their beliefs. In December, she expects to receive a second MA (in journalism) with the University of Memphis.
The 2014-15 Snedden Chair relocated to 91视频 from Tennessee with her 9-year-old daughter, Olivia Veronika.
Did you miss Julia's recent public lecture? Clips of the talk as well as the entire video can be found online through .
Richard Murphy began chasing ambulances as a newspaper photographer at the age of
18, and continued to work in that capacity during his college summers. In 1974 he
joined the Jackson Hole News, a small weekly in Jackson, Wyoming, where he served
as a darkroom technician, press assistant, chief photographer and beat reporter.
In 1985 he became photo editor of the Anchorage Daily News, and was on the team of
the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and team leader for the 1990 Pulitzer
nomination in news photography for coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He has
served as a judge for the Pulitzer Prizes, and in 2011 the National Press Photographer鈥檚
Association named him Editor of the Year.
Missed Richard's public talk in April 2014? See the Full Video - or some selected clips - on
Lewis M. Simons has been a foreign correspondent since 1967, reporting from Vietnam
and throughout Southeast Asia; India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran; China,
Japan, North and South Korea, and the former Soviet Union. He wrote for the Associated
Press, the Washington Post, and Knight-Ridder Newspapers and won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the Marcos family's hidden billions. Author
of Worth Dying For, he is a regular contributor to National Geographic and his op-ed articles have appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Bradley K. Martin has spent most of his career as an Asia correspondent and bureau
chief for news organizations that include Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg
News, The Baltimore Sun and Asia Times. After spending his formative years in Marietta,
Georgia, he majored in history at Princeton University and attended Emory University
Law School. Twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his daily reporting, he received
the Asia Pacific Special Book Prize for Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader:
North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. He has been a visiting professor of journalism at
Ohio University and Louisiana State University, a Fulbright fellow in Japan and Korea,
a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford and journalist in residence at the East-West Center
in Honolulu and Dartmouth College. Currently based in Nagano, Japan, and Bangkok,
Thailand, he analyzes developments in North Korea for Global Post.
As a reporter and photographer, Cheryl Hatch covered conflict in the Middle East and
Africa, including the aftermath of the Gulf War in Iraq and the famine and subsequent
U.S. intervention in Somalia. She also documented the fragile return to peace in Mozambique
and Eritrea.
She is the recipient of the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism at Johns Hopkins
University鈥檚 School of Advanced International Studies. Her photographs have been exhibited
worldwide, including at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. , the Sony Gallery in Cairo,
Egypt and the Leica Gallery in Solms, Germany. Her work has been published in books
and magazines, including Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and Paris Match.
Hatch was a staff photographer for the Associated Press and worked for several daily
newspapers including, the Corvallis Gazette-Times (Oregon), The Arizona Republic and the Naples Daily News (Florida).
As the founder and president of Isis Initiative, Inc., Hatch leads a nonprofit that
offers scholarships to women overseas who have the desire but not the resources to
pursue a college education.
David Offer retired at the end of 2006 as editor of two daily newspapers in central
Maine, ending a 42 year career as an editor and reporter. Before moving to Maine he
was the executive editor of the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, but resigned
after four months on the job to protest censorship of the newspaper. He was presented
the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism by the University of Oregon for that action.
Earlier he was editor of the Newport, Rhode Island Daily News and was a reporter and
editor in Wisconsin, Connecticut and Washington state.
Offer served on the board of directors of the Associated Press Managing Editors and
the Society of Professional Journalists and is past president of the New England Associated
Press Editors Association. He served four times as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize.
Photo Credit: Joshua Cooper
Robert Meyerowitz has been a journalist for 20 years. He began his career as a reporter
for a weekly paper and a public radio station in Rochester, New York. From there he
went to work for Associated Press Radio and, ultimately, for National Public Radio,
reporting on wars and elections in Nicaragua, where he was based, as well as from
Cuba, El Salvador, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, and Israel.
In 1994 he went to work as a reporter at the Anchorage Daily News. He subsequently
became the editor of the Anchorage Press, where he worked for seven years. He also
served time briefly as the editor of the Honolulu Weekly. In 2007-2008, he was the
editor of the weekly New Times Broward-Palm Beach. He's been a freelancer and stringer
for numerous newspapers, magazines and networks, including The New York Times and
the Canadian Broadcast Corp.
Joel Shurkin is a journalist, science writer and historian. He and his colleagues
at the Philadelphia Inquirer received the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for their coverage
of Three-Mile Island. He is the author of multiple books and is a science writer emeritus
at Stanford University.
Hal Foster was a reporter/editor for several newspapers including the LA Times, Seattle
PI, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also wrote Tatyana's story - an editor of
the weekly newspaper Berdyansk Delovoy in Ukraine. Tatyana wrote about government
corruption in her hometown in Ukraine. She paid for it by having acid thrown in her
face. 
Michelle Nijhuis
Spring 2026
Neil Shea
Neil Shea is the author of Frostlines: A Journey Through Entangled Lives and Landscapes in a Warming Arctic. For over 20 years he鈥檚 covered conflict, climate, and cultural transformation around the world for National Geographic, and he鈥檚 also a contributing editor with the Virginia Quarterly Review and The American Scholar. Neil also writes for film, television, and podcasts. His investigative podcast series, Unfinished: Deep South, about the life, legacy, and unsolved lynching of a wealthy Black farmer at the dawn of the Civil Rights era, was nominated for Peabody Award in 2020.
Michelle Nijhuis
Michelle Nijhuis is the author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, a history of the modern conservation movement that was named one of the best books of 2021 by The Chicago Tribune, Smithsonian Magazine, Booklist, and other publications.
Michelle writes about conservation and climate change for publications including National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, and she鈥檚 a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and a longtime contributing editor of High Country News, an independent magazine that produces some of the finest journalism in the American West.
Her work has won several national honors, including two AAAS/Kavli Science Journalism Awards and inclusion in four Best American anthologies, and it鈥檚 been generously supported by the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and the Food and Environment Reporting Network.
Michelle is also the co-editor of The Science Writers鈥 Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Pitch, Publish and Prosper in the Digital Age, and the author of The Science Writers鈥 Essay Handbook: How to Craft Compelling True Stories in Any Medium.
After fifteen years of living off the electrical grid in rural Colorado, Michelle and her family now live in White Salmon, Washington. (And if you鈥檙e wondering about her last name, it rhymes with 鈥渕y house.鈥)
Fall 2024
Chris Mooney
Chris Mooney is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Virginia鈥檚 Environmental Institute. Before transitioning to academia, he spent over a decade at The Washington Post covering climate change, earning a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for his team's work on the series 鈥2 Degrees C: Beyond the Limit.鈥 His reporting has exposed critical environmental issues, such as countries under-reporting their greenhouse gas emissions and the dramatic rise in sea levels impacting the American South. His work remains at the forefront of climate journalism, highlighting the urgent need for awareness and global action.
Preeti Simran Sethi
Preeti Simran Sethi is an award-winning journalist and 2023-2024 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow working on a book on South Asian mental health and healing through altered states. Named one of the 鈥50 Most Influential Global Indians鈥 by Vogue India and the 鈥渆nvironmental messenger鈥 by Vanity Fair, she has written for outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Guernica, and The Guardian. Sethi was designated one of the top eight women saving the planet by Marie Claire and is the author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love about the loss of biodiversity through the lens of flavor and terroir.
Spring 2024
Kenneth Rosen
Kenneth R. Rosen is an independent journalist. He is a former Logan Nonfiction Fellow and a visiting research scholar at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Atavist, New York, The New York Times and Foreign Affairs, among other publications. He has reported from the Middle East, North Africa, and across North America.
Fall 2022
Neda Ulaby
Neda Ulaby reports on arts, entertainment, and cultural trends for NPR's Arts Desk. She began there as a production assistant in 2000. Recent stories have ranged from a profile of the first woman nominated for an Oscar for cinematography to a piece about how a 鈥渂roken orchestra鈥 in Philadelphia returned unplayable instruments to public school children to an exploration of the origins of the expression 鈥渢hirst trap.鈥
Scouring the various and often overlapping worlds of art, music, television, film, new media and literature, Neda Ulaby's radio and online stories reflect political and economic realities, cultural issues, obsessions and transitions, as well as artistic adventurousness鈥 and awesomeness.
Ms. Ulaby hosted the Emmy-Award winning public television series Arab American Stories, and has worked at newspapers in Topeka, KS and Chicago, IL. A former doctoral student in literature and film at the University of Chicago, she graduated from Bryn Mawr College. Ms. Ulaby was born in Amman, Jordan and grew up in the idyllic Midwestern college towns of Lawrence, Kansas and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where, throughout her youth, she was an undistinguished student of the violin.
Spring 2018
Craig Medred
Craig Medred is an 91视频 journalist known for following stories wherever they go. A UAF alum, his career began at KTVA in Fairbanks and went through Washington, D.C., and Juneau on the way to a nearly 30-year run as a reporter and columnist at the Anchorage Daily News, 91视频 Dispatch, and 91视频 Dispatch News. Unable to let go of a passion for the stories of 91视频, its people, and its tangled politics, he now writes and edits at craigmedred.news where he remains both loved and hated and happy to make readers think.
Mark Kelley
Mark Kelley is an award-winning 91视频 photojournalist and his books have sold over a quarter million copies. His bestseller 鈥91视频: A Photographic Excursion鈥 is a Benjamin Franklin Award recipient. Mark graduated from UAF with a degree in journalism in 1978. He worked for 14 years as a daily newspaper photojournalist and became a freelance photographer in 1993.
Fall 2017
Micheal Davis
Digital information evangelist Michael Davis is a backpack journalist with 40-plus years of experience as a reporter, photographer, editor and news executive at outlets ranging from the Chicago Sun Times to TV Guide. He鈥檚 the author of Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street, a 2009 NYT bestseller, and co-produced the documentary adaptation. He founded and operates NewsHawk Media, a content creation and consulting business based in Salem, Oregon.
Spring 2017
Dorothy Parvaz
Dorothy Parvaz has worked as a senior producer at Al Jazeera based out of New York
and Doha, focusing on human rights and conflict. She was previously the digital special
projects editor for the network, where she crafted spotlight coverage on key stories
and reported on political issues and democracy in several countries, including Egypt,
Libya and Afghanistan.
In the course of reporting on the uprisings in the Middle East, she was 鈥渄isappeared鈥
in Syria and was among the first to report on the secret prisons and torture centers
there. She was transferred to Iran's Evin prison where she spent over two weeks being
interrogated before being released.
Spring 2016
Carolyn Cole
LA Times Photojournalist, Cole's work spans the globe - documenting wars, refugees and political upheaval. Among her many honors: the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, and two Robert Capa Gold Medals, NPPA Newspaper Photographer of the Year and World Press Photo awards.
Fall 2015
Matt McGrath
Originally from Tipperary in Ireland, Matt edited computer magazines for several years
before joining BBC Radio 5 live at its launch in 1994. Following stints as producer
and reporter, Matt became the station's science specialist in 1997. He joined the
BBC World Service in 2006 as environment reporter.
He has covered some of the major issues in science and environment in that period
including mad cow disease, cloning, global warming and GM food.
Highlights include reporting from the solar eclipse in the UK in 1999 and travelling
to the Arctic in 2007. Matt tested the temperatures in Copenhagen by jumping into
the icy harbour waters during the UN summit in 2009. He has reported from many parts
of the world and almost every American state, apart from 91视频!
Over the years Matt has also reported extensively on the scientific impacts of doping
in sport.
He was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in 2010-11.
Spring 2014
Susan W. White
Executive Editor, InsideClimate News
In May 2013, Susan White鈥檚 seven-person newsroom at InsideClimateNews.org received
the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for 鈥淭he Dilbit Disaster: The Biggest
Oil Spill You鈥檝e Never heard Of.鈥 Three years earlier, White鈥檚 investigative team
at ProPublica.org landed the first-ever Pulitzer awarded to an online news organization.
This former San Diego Union-Tribune editor is, arguably, industry鈥檚 leading figure
today defining serious digital journalism.
Spring 2013
David E. Sanger
Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
David E. Sanger is Chief Washington Correspondent of the New York Times, where he
has been a member of two teams that won the Pulitzer Prize. He has also won numerous
awards for coverage of the presidency and foreign policy. Mr. Sanger is author of
two New York Times best-sellers: 鈥淭he Inheritance鈥欌 (2009), and most recently, 鈥淐onfront
and Conceal: Obama鈥檚 Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power鈥欌(2012). As
a visiting senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, he has taught
national security policy.
Fall 2012
Sandra Dolbee
Sandi Dolbee became a journalist sometime between the birth of Jesus and the death of Elvis. She鈥檚 worked at newspapers from Washington state to California, including her hometown newspaper, The San Jose Mercury News. Most recently, she was the religion and ethics editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune, pioneering a beat she broadly defined as what people believe and how they behave. She鈥檚 been nominated for the Pulitizer Prize in beat reporting and is the recipient of several national journalism awards, including honors from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the National Federation of Press Women, and the Religion Newswriters Association. She is a former president of the Religion Newswriters Association, which represents journalists who cover religion in secular media in the United States and Canada. Sandi鈥檚 won fellowships to attend seminars in specialized journalism at the University of Maryland, New York University and the University of Southern California. In 2008, she was the recipient of a Templeton fellowship to study religion and science at the University of Cambridge, England. Her project was on the science of forgiveness. She has a bachelor鈥檚 degree in journalism and sociology from Central Washington University. She is currently a freelance writer and editor, and is completing a novel in which one of the main characters -- surprise, surprise -- is a journalist. She lives in San Diego, Ca.
Jacqueline Thomas
Jacqueline Thomas is an award-winning journalist who now teaches and works as a freelance writer and editor. In more than 30 years in journalism, she served as Senior Editor at The Indianapolis Star, Editorial Page Editor of The Baltimore Sun and reporter for The Chicago Sun-Times, among others. Ms. Thomas has also been an Institute of Politics Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a Visiting Fellow on the Editorial Board of The New York Times and is a past chairman of the National Press Foundation.
Spring 2012
Howard Weaver
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and former McClatchy newspapers executive Howard
Weaver will speak on how lessons learned in over 40 years of journalism can be applied
in these uncertain times.
Weaver was born in Anchorage in 1950 and lived there with brief interruptions for
forty-five years. Weaver helped lead the Anchorage Daily News to two Pulitzer Prizes,
cofounded the 91视频 Advocate, hosted a public television program, and was named one
of the forty most influential 91视频ns in the first forty years of statehood by an
91视频 Public Radio Network survey.
Fall 2011
Cheryl W. Thompson
Emmy award-winning journalist Cheryl W. Thompson is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post who has written extensively about government corruption, immigration, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Washington, D.C. police department鈥檚 handling of homicide investigations.
Most recently, she tracked guns used to kill more than 500 police officers鈥攊ncluding several in 91视频鈥攕ince 2000. The groundbreaking series examined how the killers, many of them felons, got their firearms.
A Chicago native, Ms. Thompson has a bachelor鈥檚 degree in speech communication and a master鈥檚 degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Florida, and Georgetown and Howard universities. She was part of a Washington Post team of reporters awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
Spring 2011
Preston Gannaway
Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Preston Gannaway has worked as a documentary
newspaper photographer for the past 10 years.
Gannaway believes the daily newspaper is an inclusive medium that brings visual storytelling
to a diverse audience. She currently works for The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk.
In 2008, Gannaway's intimate photo story on the St. Pierre family, Remember Me, was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.
Her work has been honored in numerous other national and international competitions,
including Pictures of the Year International's One Week's Work and an award of excellence
in Best Multimedia Project. A native of North Carolina, she began her career at the
Coalfield Progress in rural southwest Virginia after earning a BA in fine art photography
at Virginia Intermont College.
Fall 2010
Ceaser M. Williams
Ceaser M. Williams, an award-winning journalist, is a freelance writer, editor and
public relations consultant based in Independence, MO, just outside Kansas City.
The Buffalo native started his journalism career in 1969 as a general assignment reporter
with the former Buffalo Evening News. Williams worked for the paper 11 years, covering
beats that included minority affairs, city court and economic development. He won
Page 1 regional writing awards for columns as a soul music critic and for news not
under deadline for a story about a chemical plant's efforts to subvert inspections
by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Williams, who holds a cum laude bachelor
of arts degree in English from the University of Buffalo, was the first African American
to work as an editor at the News.
As a freelance journalist the last seven years, Williams' work has included serving
as executive editor of Prudence Magazine: The Voice of Africa, and creating and launching
a suburban supplement for The Kansas City Call, an African American niche newspaper.
Ceaser Williams' story ended suddenly on Dec 21, 2010 when he died of a pulmonary embolism, just three months after his Snedden Lecture. He is greatly missed.
Spring 2008
Joel Sartore
National Geographic Photographer. Besides National Geographic, Sartore has completed assignments for Time, Life, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and several numerous book projects. He has received several awards including an Award of Excellence in the category of Magazine Photographer of the year during the 1992 POY Competition.
Mark Schleifstein
Environment reporter Mark Schleifstein worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune for more than 20 years and won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Katrina disaster. Mark has also written a book on the disaster: Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms.
Spring 2007
David Handschuh
The New York Daily News 鈥 Staff Photographer. NY University Professor of Photojournalism. Handschuh suffered serious injuries and narrowly escaped with his life while covering the attack on the World Trade Center. During months of recovery, he helped to develop several programs to document and address long term physical and mental health issues for journalists that may arise from working at Ground Zero and other stressful assignments.
Fall 2006
Peggy Simpson
Peggy Simpson was the AP reporter covering John Kennedy鈥檚 assassination and is a former Contributing Editor for Ms. Magazine and Women鈥檚 e-news. She is an award-winning Washington political and economic correspondent who helped chronicle the women鈥檚 political movement.
Gary Cohn
Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Cohn is a reporter with the Los Angeles Times. Many of Cohn鈥檚 stories have exposed wrongdoing, raised important public policy issues and resulted in significant reforms. He won the 1998 investigative reporting Pulitzer for a series of articles in the Baltimore Sun that documented the dangers to workers and the environment when old warships are dismantled.
Frank Bass
Frank Bass shared the 1988 Pulitzer for general news reporting for an investigation into the high infant mortality rate in Alabama. He is now assigned to a Washington-based national investigations team specializing in multimedia stories, and is the author of 鈥楾he Associated Press Guide to Internet Research and Reporting.鈥
Fall 2005
Richard Murphy
Photo Editor, Anchorage Daily News. His professional honors include being part of the Daily News鈥檚 1989 Pulitzer Prize-winning team, and three-time winner of the Picture of the year, Best Use award. Murphy鈥檚 photography is represented in a variety of personal and museum collections, including at the University of 91视频 Museum of the North.
Maurice Possley
Maurice Possley has covered local and national aspects of the legal system, including the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the case against Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, and the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. Possley was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and 2001 for work with other Tribune reporters on prosecutorial misconduct and the death penalty. Their reporting was cited by former Illinois Gov. George Ryan as playing a significant role in his decision to empty Death Row in 2003 by commuting all death sentences in Illinois.
Spring 2005
Tom French
Tom French earned his Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for the series 鈥淎ngels & Demons鈥, about the murder of three women visiting Florida. He started his career as a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times and began development of several projects that grew into books. The first was a newspaper series titled 鈥淎 Cry in the Night,鈥 an account of a dramatic murder investigation and trial that French turned into a book called 鈥淯nanswered Cries.鈥 A year reporting in a public high school produced the series and book 鈥淪outh of Heaven.鈥
Julie Sullivan
Julie Sullivan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Oregonian in Portland, Ore., who started her career at The Frontiersman in Wasilla. She shared the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with three colleagues at The Oregonian who exposed flaws in the immigration and Naturalization Service.
Eric Nalder
Eric Nalder has won two Pulitzer Prizes. The first for his coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and his second for an investigative report about a federal Indian housing program. A reporter for 34 years, he has received numerous state, regional and national journalism awards and has taught interviewing and investigative reporting workshops in five countries. Nalder now works for the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
