Cronkite Faculty

Associate Professor
Ph.D., Ohio University

Craig Allen is an associate professor of the Barrett Honors College at the Downtown Phoenix campus. He also chairs the ASU University Hearing Board. Allen’s leadership also includes five years as chair of the ASU University Hearing Board, past presidency of ASU’s Downtown University Senate and membership on the University Academic Council and the ASU General Studies Council. He joined the Cronkite faculty after 14 years in broadcast and print journalism and seven years teaching college journalism. He has written extensively on political media, presidential communication and the international mass media and has conducted pioneering historical research on Spanish language television.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Professor of Practice in Health News
B.A., University of North Texas

Pauline Arrillaga leads a team of students at Cronkite News whose coverage focuses on health care issues in underserved communities across the Southwest. Prior to her current role, she worked for 27 years with The Associated Press. She received numerous accolades throughout her journalism career, including the RFK Journalism Award and the John Seigenthaler Prize for Courage in Reporting. Her work examining the effects of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies on children and families named her as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting.

Louise Solheim Professor
Ph.D., Michigan State University

Marianne Barrett brought her experiences as an ESPN programming executive to the Cronkite School when she joined the faculty in 1994. Barrett, whose research focuses on audience loyalty, media management, economics and policy, was awarded NATPE Faculty Development Grants in 1999 and 2017 and was named a Frank Stanton Fellow by the International Radio and Television Society in 2002 for her “outstanding contributions to electronic media education.” She was named the Louise Solheim Professor of Journalism in 2006 and was an associate dean and later senior associate dean from 2005-2017.

Executive Editor, Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
M.A., University of Florida

Maud Beelman is the founding executive editor of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and a professor of practice at the Cronkite School. Before joining the faculty in 2019, she was the U.S. Investigations Editor for The Associated Press. Beelman is the founding director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, leading ICIJ from its inception in 1997 to 2004. For the next 10 years, she directed local, regional and national investigations for The Dallas Morning News. She is also a former war and foreign correspondent, covering German unification, Mideast conflict and the wars in former Yugoslavia. Her work has received many honors, including the George Polk, Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi awards. She serves on the board of directors of the Alicia Patterson Foundation and is a longtime IRE member and newsroom trainer.

Assistant Dean
M.B.A., American University
M.A., University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

As assistant dean, Rebecca Blatt oversees the Cronkite School’s master’s degree and online programs, curriculum assessment, academic integrity and new program development. Blatt served in two faculty positions before becoming assistant dean. As director of the Cronkite News Digital Production Bureau, she led a team of undergraduate and graduate students who produced and managed digital content for Cronkite News, the news division of Arizona PBS. She also previously directed the Cronkite Public Insight Network Bureau, which was awarded the prestigious ASU President’s Award for Innovation and the Associated Press Media Editors College Innovator of the Year award under her leadership. Blatt began her career in public radio at NPR, North Carolina Public Radio and WAMU 88.5 FM in Washington, D.C.

Professor of Practice (Joint faculty appointment with the School of Sustainability)
B.F.A., California Institute of the Arts

Peter Byck is the director, producer and writer of “Carbon Nation.” He is currently helping to lead a $5.3 million research project on Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing, collaborating with 20 scientists and 10 ranchers focused on soil health and soil carbon storage, microbial/bug/bird biodiversity, water cycling and more. Byck is preparing to release a feature-length documentary (in ten parts), "Carbon Cowboys," focused on regenerative grazing, and is in production on a long-form documentary on the AMP grazing research project. Byck’s first documentary, “Garbage,” won the South by Southwest Film Festival. Byck’s second documentary, “Carbon Nation,” has screened all over the world.

Executive Producer, Cronkite News
M.A., Arizona State University

Christy Bricks is the executive producer of Cronkite News, the award-winning, student-produced newscast on Arizona PBS. Prior to joining the Cronkite School, Bricks was the 10 p.m. newscast producer at KPNX-TV in Phoenix and the weekend producer at KOLD-TV in Tucson, Arizona. Before earning her master's degree from the Cronkite School, Bricks was a military broadcaster for the U.S. Air Force where, she covered stories across Europe and Iraq. Bricks has won eight Rocky Mountain Emmys, a regional Edward R. Murrow and a Thomas Jefferson Award, the highest broadcasting honor in the Department of Defense.

Dean, University Vice Provost and Arizona PBS CEO
M.P.A., Harvard University

Christopher Callahan is the founding dean of the Cronkite School, leading a team of nearly 400 faculty and staff and 2,500 students across 10 degree programs. He is the architect of the school’s signature professional immersion programs that provide deep experiential learning for students and important news and information to the state, region and nation. He also serves as vice provost of the 13,000-student, seven-college Downtown Phoenix campus, and is CEO of Arizona PBS, the nation’s seventh-largest PBS station. Callahan is chair of the Hearst Awards Steering Committee, has led 13 accreditation teams to review the nation’s top journalism schools and won the Scripps Award for Journalism Administrator of the Year. Prior to joining ASU, Callahan was associate dean at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and senior editor of the American Journalism Review. Before entering journalism education, Callahan was a Washington correspondent for The Associated Press. He is a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the author of "A Journalist’s Guide to the Internet."

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Professor of Practice in Health News
B.A., Universidad San Carlos

Cisneros is one of two Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Professors of Practice in Health News. He works with a team of students in Cronkite News who cover health care issues in the Southwest, with a particular focus on Latino and Native American communities. Cisneros is an Emmy Award-winning journalist with 23 years of experience as a reporter, director and editor at Spanish-language television, radio and digital outlets, including Telemundo and Univision.

Knight Chair in Data Journalism
M.A., University of Maryland

Sarah Cohen is the Knight Chair focusing on data journalism. She comes to Cronkite after a 25-year career in news, most recently leading a group of New York Times reporters who focused on data- and document-driven investigations. As a database editor at The Washington Post, she shared in the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and was a Pulitzer finalist for public service. She also served as the first Knight Chair in computational journalism at Duke University and as an adjunct instructor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Cohen also is the immediate past president of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a 5,000-member training organization for journalists.

Professor
B.A., Dartmouth College

Steve Doig joined the Cronkite faculty in 1996 as the school’s founding Knight Chair in Journalism following a 23-year career in newspaper journalism. He stepped down from the Knight Chair in 2017, but remains on the Cronkite faculty to concentrate on developing and teaching online data courses. An expert in computer-assisted reporting, Doig was part of an investigative team at The Miami Herald that won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for an analysis on how weakened building codes and poor construction contributed to the devastation of Hurricane Andrew.

Weil Family Professor of Journalism, Professor
M.A., The Ohio State University

Leonard Downie Jr. is the former executive editor and vice president of The Washington Post, where he was executive editor from 1991-2008. During his 44 years at the Post, Downie was an investigative reporter, editor on the local and national news staffs, London correspondent and managing editor and helped supervise the newspaper’s Watergate coverage. During his 17 years as executive editor, the newspaper won 25 Pulitzer Prizes. Downie is a founder and former board member of Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., an advisory board member of the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at the University of Maryland and chairman of the board of advisers of Kaiser Health News. He is the author of five nonfiction books and a novel.

Content Director, Cronkite News
B.A., University of Mississippi

Heather Lovett Dunn instructs and supervises the student reporters for the award-winning student-produced live newscast, Cronkite News. Prior to joining the Cronkite School, Dunn worked as the senior content manager at KPNX-TV in Phoenix, and produced newscasts at KPHO-TV in Phoenix, KVOA-TV in Tucson, Ariz., and KTVK-TV in Phoenix. Dunn has been honored with three Emmy awards for breaking news, continuing coverage and education programming.

Head Football Coach, Arizona State University, Professor of Practice
B.S., San Diego State University

Herm Edwards is Arizona State University’s football coach and a former NFL player who has coached at the professional and collegiate levels over the past 20 years. He came to ASU following nine years as an NFL analyst for ESPN and is known as a dynamic public speaker as well as a philanthropist. Edwards received the 2012 Walter Camp Foundation Man of the Year Award for his longtime commitment and contributions to football. In 2017, he received the inaugural Voices Leadership Award from that organization for his support of families, survivors and first responders of Sept. 11. Edwards is active in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and his own Herman L. Edwards Family Youth Foundation.

Lecturer
B.A., Arizona State University
Valeria Fernández has been reporting on Arizona’s immigrant community and the immigration debate for more than 10 years. She was named “Latina Journalist of the Year” in 2004 by the National Association of Hispanic Publications. She co-directed and produced a documentary "Two Americans," which parallels the stories of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and a 9-year-old U.S. citizen whose parents were arrested during a workplace immigration raid. It won the Audience Award for Best Feature Documentary at the Arizona International Film Festival. She freelances for a number of print, digital and broadcast media outlets, including CNN Español, CNN International, Radio Bilingue, PRI's The World, La Opinión and The Associated Press. She is a fellow for the International Center for Journalists.

Senior Associate Dean, Reynolds Professor in Business Journalism
M.A., University of Nebraska

Kristin Gilger is senior associate dean and Reynolds Professor in Business Journalism at the Cronkite School. She oversees professional programs, adjunct faculty, curriculum development and grant programs, among other things. She also serves as executive director of two centers at the Cronkite School – the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism and the National Center on Disability and Journalism.

Professor of Practice
B.A., University of Vermont

Dan Gillmor is an internationally recognized leader in new media and entrepreneurial journalism and digital media literacy. A longtime Silicon Valley-based journalist, Gillmor wrote a popular business and technology column for the San Jose Mercury News and launched a weblog in 1999, one of the first mainstream journalism blogs. In 2004, he published “We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People,” the leading book on citizen journalism. He leads Cronkite's News Co/Lab and the Scripps Howard Journalism Entrepreneurship Institute.

Associate Professor
Ph.D., Temple University

Dawn Gilpin spent more than 15 years working in Italy in organizational communication and public relations, including crisis management and internal communication. She completed her Ph.D. in Mass Media and Communication at Temple University, where she was a Presidential Fellow. Gilpin’s research focuses on the interactions between organizations, media and public policy, particularly in terms of organizational and issue identity and the dynamics of knowledge and power. She teaches public relations and social media at the Cronkite School.

Professor of Practice
B.A., Lincoln University

Venita Hawthorne James is a veteran journalist with more than three decades of experience at The Arizona Republic. Hawthorne James leads coverage at the Cronkite News – Phoenix Bureau, in which students cover important stories across the state. She most recently led reporters and editors in the Republic's Community Watchdog operation, dedicated to accountability coverage of city government, growth and development, public safety, K-12 education and reader-contributed content in communities across the Phoenix metropolitan area. She also is a former chapter president and regional director of the National Association of Black Journalists and an alumnus of Leadership West.

Director, New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab, Professor of Practice
M.A., Arizona State University

Retha Hill joined the Cronkite faculty in 2007 after nearly eight years at BET, where she was vice president for content for BET Interactive, the online unit of Black Entertainment Television and the most-visited site specializing in African-American content on the Internet. Before joining BET, Hill was executive producer for special projects at washingtonpost.com. At the New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab, Hill works with students from multiple disciplines, including journalism, to research and develop digital media products for media companies.

Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Michigan State University

Ali Hussain is an assistant professor of digital audience engagement. He has more than 11 years of experience in designing and implementing persuasive communication campaigns using both traditional and new media technologies including mobile phones. During his doctoral studies at Michigan State University, Hussain has worked on NSF and USAID funded projects. He has specifically pioneered the use of nostalgic emotions for health communication. His scholarship is published in a book chapter as well as Communication Research Reports, among other journals.

Director of Studio Production, Cronkite School and Arizona PBS
M.A.S., Arizona State University

Jim Jacoby joined the Cronkite School faculty after 20 years in television news. An Emmy-winning editor and director, Jacoby teaches television production and serves as the school’s production manager. In addition to his Cronkite School duties, he works as a freelance editor and produces graphics for the Arizona Cardinals, Sun Devil Football and several local production companies.

Director of Sports Programs, Director of Cronkite News – Phoenix Sports Bureau, Professor of Practice
M.B.A., Northwestern University

Brett Kurland leads the Cronkite News – Phoenix Sports Bureau where students cover professional and intercollegiate sports. He is an Emmy Award-winning sports producer and multimedia entrepreneur with more than 16 years of experience producing content across a variety of platforms, ranging from mobile phones to broadcast television networks. Kurland’s work has included documentaries, features, live events and studio shows for numerous networks, including ESPN CBS, FOX and NBC.

Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism, President, Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, Professor
M.A., University of Missouri

Andrew Leckey is the Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism and president of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at the Cronkite School. A Fulbright Scholar in China, he launched both the Reynolds Center and Cronkite Business Journalism Specialization. Leckey was a longtime nationally syndicated investment columnist for Chicago Tribune, an anchor for CNBC and has written or edited 10 financial books. He was the founding director of the Bloomberg Business Journalism Program at University of California, Berkeley. A former Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics Journalism and a Media Studies Fellow, both at Columbia University, he serves on advisory boards of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, Knight-Bagehot Fellowship and Arizona Fulbright Association.

Executive Editor, Cronkite News, Professor of Practice
B.A., University of Oklahoma

Christina Leonard is executive editor of Cronkite News, the news division of Arizona PBS. She previously led the Reynolds Business Reporting Bureau for Cronkite News. She joined the Cronkite School in 2015 after 17 years as a reporter and editor at The Arizona Republic in Phoenix. Her leadership roles included Phoenix-West Valley regional editor, state politics editor, assistant business editor and editor-in-chief of two business magazines, Arizona Woman and bizAZ. She is the former president, vice president and treasurer of the Arizona chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association and was founder and former chairwoman of the Republic’s Diversity Committee. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Gannett chairman’s award and several Arizona Press Club honors.

Donald W. Reynolds Visiting Professor of Business Journalism
B.A., William Paterson University

Susan Lisovicz has worked at major cable news networks, such as CNN and CNBC, as an on-air financial reporter, covering business stories such as diamond mining in South Africa, micro-lending in Bangladesh and the handover of the Panama Canal. She is best known for her frequent reports from Wall Street, which spanned the peak of the dot-com boom to the Great Recession.

Associate Dean, Associate General Manager for Innovation and Design
M.Ed., Arizona State University

Mark Lodato leads undergraduate recruitment and retention efforts and supervises the Cronkite School’s broadcast and sports curriculum. His duties also include leadership of academic services and student success, establishing new media partnerships and development. Since joining the Cronkite School in 2006, Lodato has established new partnerships with leading media corporations including NBC News, ABC News, Univision, Meredith Corporation, Scripps Corporation, Fox Sports Arizona, the Pac-12 Networks and Cox Communications. He is the 2014 recipient of the ASU Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Curricular Innovation and a member of the Scripps Howard Academic Leadership Academy class of 2013.

Founding Director, Public Relations Lab, Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Miami

Fran Matera joined the Cronkite faculty in 1989 after teaching at Florida International University and the University of Miami. She has a background in both newspapers and public relations, including stints as night copy chief at the Miami News, editor of a fine arts magazine and account executive at two Miami public relations agencies. She is the founding director of the Cronkite School's Public Relations Lab and teaches writing for public relations and public relations campaigns. Her research focuses on Hispanic audiences and is conducted in both English and Spanish.

Knight Professor of Practice, TV News Innovation
M.C. Gonzaga University

Frank Mungeam is the Knight Professor of Practice for TV News Innovation, and will lead the collaboration and experimentation arms of a unique three-part project to promote local TV news innovation through research, collaboration and experimentation as part of a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation initiative to innovate local TV news. Mungeam previously served as TEGNA’s vice president of digital audience engagement with a focus on digital innovation, strategic partnerships and best practices to engage audiences on digital and social media platforms. Previously, Mungeam was TEGNA’s VP of digital content, leading the company’s digital and social strategy. He joined the TEGNA corporate team in July 2014 as director of digital content for Gannett Broadcasting.

Director of Cronkite News - Borderland and Director for Diversity Initiatives
B.S., Florida International University

Vanessa Ruiz is the Emmy Award-winning director of the Borderlands bureau reporting team at Cronkite News. She also helps lead the Spanish-language newscast, Cronkite Noticias, works on special productions at Arizona PBS and is a Cronkite ambassador for diversity and inclusion. Before coming to Cronkite, Ruiz was the main evening news anchor for KPNX, the NBC affiliate station in Phoenix. Her career began with Telemundo Network’s national newscast, becoming Telemundo International’s youngest news anchor before transitioning into the English-speaking market at WSVN-FOX Miami. Ruiz has also worked for KNBC in Los Angeles and the U.S. Agency for Global Media for TV Marti. She has been recognized by the National Academy of Arts & Sciences and received the David Burke Distinguished Journalism Award. She is an active member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Professor
Ph.D., University of Colorado Boulder

Joseph Russomanno joined the Cronkite School in 1994 after working as a news reporter in radio and television and as a television news writer, newscast producer and executive producer at stations in St. Louis and Denver. He has received several awards for his broadcast work. His teaching and research focus on First Amendment law. Russomanno has published three books related to First Amendment law and has written articles and opinion columns for scholarly and mass media publications.

B.A., Arizona State University

Lisa has deep experience leading strategic marketing and communications initiatives, primarily in the health and technology space. She leads the Cronkite School’s Public Relations Lab, working with students and clients on PR and marketing campaigns to provide a practical learning environment for students while generating results for clients. Lisa most recently served as the general manager at a global marketing agency, Allison+Partners. As GM, Lisa oversaw day-to-day operations, client services and the team at the Scottsdale office. In addition, she led client communications for a variety of national clients and spearheaded the healthcare offerings of the agency.

Frank Russell Chair in the Business of Journalism
B.S., Northwestern University

Julia Wallace was a top media executive and high-ranking editor at four major newspapers. She was the first woman editor-in-chief of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and led a successful effort to converge TV, newspaper, radio and digital organizations at Cox Media Group Ohio. Before joining Atlanta, she was managing editor of the Arizona Republic and also served as managing editor of the Chicago Sun-Times and USA Today. As the Frank Russell Chair in the Business of Journalism, Wallace teaches classes on the future of news, new business models and innovative ways of thinking about journalism at the Cronkite School. She was named the 2004 Editor of the Year by Editor & Publisher Magazine. Her alma mater, Northwestern University, inducted her into the Medill School of Journalism Hall of Achievement and awarded her the Alumni Merit Award. While she was editor in Atlanta, the newspaper won two Pulitzer prizes. She is a national board member of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Editor-in-Residence
MNpS, Arizona State University

Maureen West teaches newswriting to graduate students and undergraduates. She was previously a reporter and editor and for The Arizona Republic, and a correspondent for The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the AARP Bulletin, and wrote for the Center for Public Integrity. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism. She earned a master's degree in nonprofit studies at ASU and holds a graduate certificate in program evaluation from Claremont Graduate University. She is a former Knight Fellow at Stanford University.

Visiting Professor
David Ariosto, an author and veteran journalist, is a visiting professor at the Cronkite School. Ariosto has managed, produced and written pieces for National Geographic, Time Magazine, NPR, Reuters, CNN and Al Jazeera America, and he spent two years as a Havana, Cuba-based photojournalist for CNN. His book, “This is Cuba: An American Journalist Under Castro’s Shadow,” was released in 2018. Based in Phoenix, Ariosto earned a master’s degree of public policy from George Mason University. He will lead a group of students on a year-long investigative reporting project into the alarming increase of teen suicides in Arizona.

Editor-in-Residence
B.A., Penn State University

Torie Bosch is the editor of Future Tense, a joint collaboration between New America, Slate magazine, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies and their effects on public policy and society. She was the co-editor of the anthologies, What Future: The Year’s Best Ideas to Reclaim, Reanimate, and Reinvent Our Future (Unnamed Press, 2017) and Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow (Unnamed Press, 2019). Prior to joining Future Tense, she was an associate editor at Slate, where she edited the medical and religion departments, wrote and produced videos, and served as the site’s first social media coordinator.

Writer-in-Residence
M.F.A., Goucher College

Terry Greene Sterling has long written about the people, policies and landscapes of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Fluent in Spanish, Greene Sterling was a Phoenix New Times staff writer for 14 years, and has written for The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Atlantic, Slate, Village Voice, The Guardian, The Arizona Republic and Salon.com, among others. She was named Arizona’s Journalist of the Year three times among more than 50 journalism awards. They include a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, a National Association of Black Journalists First Place in Feature Writing, and a Society of Professional Journalists Silver Key Award for 25 years of notable journalism. She authored "Illegal: Life and Death in Arizona’s Immigration War Zone" in 2010, and has taught narrative nonfiction for 15 years at the Cronkite School, where she is writer-in-residence and affiliated faculty. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College.

Editor-in-Residence
B.A., Arizona State University

Kaila White Roberts is a breaking-news editor for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, where she coaches reporters and interns to find and cover news that affects and reflects local communities day to day. She most recently was an editor on the Republic’s podcast team and is the host of its Valley 101 podcast, which is an in-depth narrative podcast answering questions the public submits about metro Phoenix. Previously, she was a Republic reporter for six years, writing stories about social issues, diversity, politics and more. She is passionate about using social media as a reporting tool and has used it to find original stories and sources during the Country Thunder music festival, the 2019 teacher walkouts in Oklahoma and Arizona, high-profile accidents and crashes, and mass shootings. For the past four years, she has also been an emcee and coach with the Arizona Storytellers Project, a series of live events in which journalists coach people to tell true, first-person stories on stage. She is also a passionate member of the Republic’s Diversity Committee, which works to ensure our coverage accurately and fairly reflects the diverse people and communities of Arizona.