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Music produced by BTMM professor to be featured during Black History Month

Some recordings of works by composer Leslie Savoy Burrs, produced by Associate Professor Jack Klotz Jr., BTMM, and Vincent Leonard are going to be featured this month on Raleigh-Durham, N.C., classical music radio station WCPE FM’s “WAVElengths” program as part of their celebration of Black History Month.

Burrs’ work is being highlighted along with that of other notable African-American composers, William Grant Still, Billy Childs, Valerie Coleman and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. during the month of February.  The show can be heard here.

Professor Sloan publishes book chapter on drama and counterterrorism training

Simulations are a key component in counterterrorism training, but they’re most effective when they are teeming with realism.

So when counterterrorism expert Stephen Sloan co-authored his latest book on the subject, “Red Teams and Counterterrorism Training,” he asked his wife, Professor Roberta Sloan, THEA, to write a chapter on the vital role dramatic techniques can play in the creation of believable role-playing.

“It’s important because if the personnel playing terrorists are not convincing, then the reality of the exercise is diminished and the training is not as professional and productive as it should be,” she says. “My chapter is a mini-manual on what, if you are not an actor, you need to do in order to portray a terrorist convincingly.”

For example, a terrorist from a Middle Eastern culture would have a far smaller personal space than an American. “That person, indeed, may stand close enough so that their breath goes into the other person’s face when speaking,” Sloan says.

It’s the attention to details like posture, stance, movement, or even ways of eating that help make the situation seem real. However, Sloan doesn’t expect participants to master the art of acting for this part of their job. “When I think of mastery in acting, that takes years and years of work,” she says.

Since his first book in 1981, “Simulating Terrorism,” Stephen Sloan has conducted simulations all over the world for police and military personnel; Roberta Sloan has participated in two of them.

“That was enough for me,” she says. “After all, I’m an actress myself and really get into my roles, so I found that playing a terrorist was ultimately very upsetting to me.”

Sloan hopes her chapter, lauded by reviewers for its “innovative approach,” will result in security personnel “being better trained to defend our nation against the ongoing threat of terrorism.”

“Red Teams and Counterterrorism Training,” published by University of Oklahoma Press and co-authored by Robert J. Bunker, will be released in May 2011. It includes a forward by David Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma, a former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Professor Cai teaches gender communication and leadership skills to diplomats

Professor Deborah Cai, chair of the Strategic Communication Department, was one of the trainers for a three-day training program for Afghan and Italian diplomats on gender communication and leadership. The program was sponsored by the Italian Foreign Ministry and the training program was conducted by Women’s Campaign International in Rome.

More than 20 Italian and Afghan diplomats, both men and women, participated in the training. Cai, along with Susan Ness, a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission; Kerri Kennedy, executive director of Women’s Campaign International; and U.S. Ambassador Meryl Frank, United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, led the leadership training sessions that covered issues such as competence, power, strategic vision and media management.

The Afghan participants were chosen through written and oral exams and an interview from more than 700 government employees wishing to attend the program.

“At the conclusion of the program one woman said that she returns to Afghanistan with courage, and that she hopes to share that courage with other women,” Cai said.

Assistant Professor Tharps publishes new novel

Lori Tharps (photo by John Barone)

Assistant Professor Lori Tharps, JOUR, has published her most recent novel, “Substitute Me” (Atria Books).

Prior to joining Temple’s School of Communications and Theater, Tharps was a staff writer for Vibe magazine and a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly. She continues to write and has appeared in publications such as Glamour, Essence and Vogue Black. She has authored three books.

Synopsis: “Zora Anderson, an African American 30-year-old college dropout with wanderlust, leaves her accidental au pair position in Paris and returns to her hometown of Ann Arbor with no life plan in mind and no real goals on the horizon.  With pressure mounting from her well-educated, upper-middle class parents to do something useful with her life and with her own self-doubt growing, Zora decides to start over in New York and sublets a small Fort Greene studio apartment from a friend who is attending college in Massachusetts.  After combing the newspaper classifieds and finding a want ad for a “substitute me,” Zora lands a job in Park Slope with a WASP-y professional couple in their 30s, Kate and Brad Carter, to look after their young son, Oliver. Although Zora’s primary goal is to merely keep the rent money coming in to pay for her sublet, she soon becomes attached to Oliver, a baby with a sweet disposition who is adored by his parents. But as happy as she is with the Carters, Zora keeps her job a secret from her parents whom she is certain will view her position as demeaning and not much different than one of servitude. While Oliver’s mother, Kate, initially feels ambivalent about returning to work after her maternity leave, she soon adjusts to being back in the office and spends long hours there as she keeps a close eye on a competitive colleague who wants her job. With Kate’s new long hours, Zora begins working overtime to accommodate her employer’s hectic schedule and becomes a true substitute in the Carter household in ways she never would have imagined.”

Visit Tharps’ website.

Professor Hobbs: Digital, media literacy are essential life skills

The Knight Commission has released “Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action,” a new policy paper by Professor Renee Hobbs, BTMM, and founder of the Media Education Lab. In it, a detailed plan positions digital and media literacy as essential life skills and outlines steps that policymakers, educators and community advocates can take to help Americans thrive in the digital age.

Coming the day after U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released the National Education Technology Plan, “Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action” provides four broad strategies and 10 specific recommendations on how to provide students and adults with the knowledge and critical thinking skills to sort through the overwhelming amount of digital information they receive every day in our media-saturated society.

“Full participation in contemporary culture requires not just consuming messages, but also creating and sharing them,” writes Hobbs. “To fulfill the promise of digital citizenship, Americans must acquire multimedia communication skills and know how to use these skills to engage in the civic life of their communities.”

This is why the commission recommended that digital and media literacy be integrated as critical elements for education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state and local education officials, and that public libraries and other community institutions be funded and supported as centers of digital and media training.

The paper focuses on steps to ensure that citizens are equipped with the analytical and communications skills they need to be successful in the 21st century.  It also proposes the integration of digital and media literacy into advocacy campaigns, education curricula, and community-based initiatives. From parents concerned with online safety issues, to students searching for information online at home, schools and libraries, to everyday citizens looking for accurate and relevant health care and government resources, all Americans can benefit from learning how to access, analyze and create digital and media content with thoughtfulness and social responsibility.

(The Knight Commission press release)

Virtual art show features Associate Professor Drury

Associate Professor Sarah Drury, FMA, is showing in the Virtual Public Art Project show, based at the Esther Klein Gallery. The VPAP is a series of eight augmented reality pieces, which are virtual public art pieces that can be accessed with a smartphone at particular locations around Philadelphia. VPAP is sponsored by the Breadboard Initiative of the University City Science Center.

Assistant Professor Evans holds several screenings for latest film

Assistant Professor Rodney Evans, FMA, will screened his new narrative short film, Billy and Aaron, at the MIX Experimental Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Nov. 10 in New York City. The film also screen in Amsterdam on Nov. 5 to 7 at the Africa In the Picture Film Festival  and in Johannesburg and Capetown in South Africa in the Out in Africa Film Festival. Billy and Aaron chronicles the personal and professional experiences of jazz composer, Billy Strayhorn. It premiered in April at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival.

Interim Dean Jacobson earns NSF grant

The decision-making process can be complex, especially for a governmental body whose choices directly impact the public it serves.

Interim Dean Thomas Jacobson is currently conducting research, with a $195,844 grant from the National Science Foundation, that examines how communication might change how an agency makes a decision that satisfies the public’s demands. In many cases, an agency will include public dialogue in a decision-making process and incorporate the input into its conclusion.

“While there is much advice from conflict resolution and public participation practitioners on how to do this well, there is little scientific understanding of how people judge the quality of these dialogues and how those judgments, in turn, affect the acceptance of decisions,” according to the project overview.

Jacobson and a team of researchers, led by Thomas Webler of the Social and Environmental Research Institute, are focusing on a series of public discussions led by the California Department of Fish and Game as it formulates a plan to comply with the Marine Life Protection Act and its requirement to redesign California’s system of protected marine areas.

The research team hopes to offer insight into how an agency can make decisions with “higher democratic legitimacy.”

Assistant Professor Feistman to receive PRSA education award

Assistant Professor Gregg Feistman, STRC, will be this year’s recipient of the Philadelphia Public Relations Society of America’s Anthony Fulginiti Award for Commitment to Education.

The award will be given the night of Dec. 7 at the Philadelphia chapter’s annual Pepperpot Awards for the best public relations campaigns of the year.

The award is named after Professor Tony Fulginiti who, in 1976, established a PRSSA chapter at Rowan University, wanting his public relations students to learn and grow in a professional setting and establish Rowan as a key institution in the public relations realm. This chapter is now one of the most successful in the country.
The Anthony Fulginiti Award was established to honor a public relations professional who shares Fulginiti’s commitment to the future of public relations. Each year, one person is honored who excels in education, either through their mentoring/teaching, their efforts to help shape the careers of future PR professionals, or their contributions to PRSSA.

SCT, Iraqi media experts connect for social media webinar

Approximately 50 students, as well as faculty and media professionals, participated in the webinar in Erbil, Iraq.

Three faculty members from the Department of Journalism spent the morning of Oct. 26 discussing the benefits of integrating social media into their classrooms.

What made the presentation special was their audience.

Half a world away, the images of Associate Professor Chris Harper, Assistant Professor Susan Jacobson and Assistant Professor Shenid Bhayroo were received by students, faculty and media professionals at the Institute of Technology in Erbil, Iraq, via Skype.

The project was led by Moustafa Ayad, a new media specialist working with the United Nations Development Program in Baghdad and the International Research and Exchanges Board on an initiative to connect universities throughout the Middle East and North Africa with institutions in America and the United Kingdom to discuss media development.

“People really want to learn how to use these tools,” Ayad said. “This project is about creating knowledge bases [of people in Iraq] who can then pass it along to other media professionals.”

(L-R): Associate Professor Chris Harper, Assistant Professor Susan Jacobson and Assistant Professor Shenid Bhayroo participate in a Skype discussion with professors and students in Iraq.

The Temple University professors touched on some of the ways social media has pervaded the School of Communications and Theater. Harper discussed how WordPress runs philadelphianeighborhoods.com, the capstone of the Journalism Department, and the Facebook and Twitter pages that support it.

“Although the students and professors are Iraqi citizens, they are Kurds, which is a rather independent group and geographical area in the country. It is good to see how the school is already using social media tools in the curriculum,” Harper said.

Bhayroo took a broader look at new media and how it’s used for research, while underscoring the importance of verifying and fact-checking every piece of information found on-line.

“The questions from our colleagues and students in Erbil highlighted their concerns about verifying identities and information obtained online. Their questions also highlighted security anxieties about publishing stories online, and the challenges they face in building transparent and representative media in the war-ravaged country,” he said.

Jacobson rounded out the webinar with a discussion on social media optimization: “how journalists are starting to use social media networks to increase their online audiences.”

“One of the professors told us that people in Erbil often use … social media sites to disseminate news when it was difficult to get information because of conflict,” Jacobson said.  “[A] professor asked why we would use social networks for news in the United States, when the flow of information is much freer.”

She replied with the notion that the trend toward social media is being driven by the young generation of media consumers.

Connecting people around the world through the Internet brings its fair share of challenges, especially in Iraq, where power outages are the norm. Ayad said they tested other technology, such as online streaming services and an open-source option that could be viewed by anyone. But he decided Skype proved to be the most reliable technology and would work the best for this project. The session at Temple, the first to connect with an Iraqi audience, was briefly impacted by a bandwidth issue, but it otherwise ran unhampered.

“We want to help media professionals and to create better media students and a better media environment through these collaborations,” Ayad said.

While discussions on this subject on Western college campuses aren’t out of the norm, Ayad said they’re vital to the future of Iraqi media. “This is a meaningful form of collaboration,” he said. “It’s a way to connect with viewpoints that you’re not otherwise going to have a chance to interact with.”

Ayad said many Iraqis are on Facebook, but the access to the Internet – and reliable electricity – can be tough to find. He said estimates on the percentage of Iraqis online ranges from 1 percent to 25 percent of the population. Active users, though, tend to see Facebook as solely a social entity

He hopes future webinars between Iraqi and Western universities can focus on issues such as curriculum development, media law and other subjects.