Fellow Brings Up Issues of Race, Gender in Media

The School of Journalism was fortunate this summer to host Vera Walker who taught a course called "Race, Gender and the Media." Walker, who is in the process of finishing her Ph.D. in Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, very much enjoyed being able to teach a course so dear to her heart. Through the use of film clips and documentaries in addition to text books, Walker has made her students aware of the differing images and portrayals of gender and race in contemporary media. Her class screened "Killing Us Softly," a documentary about images of women in television advertising, and participated in a teleconference with Chris Campbell, the author of one of the students' textbooks. These strategies transformed Walker's class into a multimedia event. Walker is proud of the results: "I have been able to influence in a positive way the academic experience of students at IU. This has in turn been a wonderful, wonderful experience for me."

The School of Journalism at IU contributed in no small way to the quality of Walker's summer fellowship stint. "I had a very warm reception here. Everyone has been very helpful." In fact, during her first week here, Walker was invited to participate in a workshop being sponsored in Bloomington by the Freedom Forum, an organization dedicated to the ethics of free press and speech. In fact, after working with several IU faculty members on a project, Walker will present a paper with a panel from Bloomington at the Conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications in Baltimore. After only eight weeks here in Bloomington, Vera Walker has become a vital part of the School of Journalism, "They are treating me like a member of the faculty."

While here, Walker has been working in earnest on finishing the research for her dissertation, which focuses upon how children use multimedia CD-Rom programming for learning. This project involves studying how children react to what they learn from a story they read on a computer CD-Rom and how it compares with what they learn from a story told to them orally. Walker is interested to find out some of the differences and similarities inherent in learning with computers and hopes to complete her degree by December. Thus far, she has found that, "There is a need for the technology, but it can't replace the interpersonal experience that is storytelling."

This fall, Vera Walker will take a position as a faculty member at Xavier University of New Orleans in the Mass Communications Department. Her responsibilities will be to set up grants and to teach public relations and speech. These will be new courses for her, but she is used to adapting quickly to the demands of new surroundings. In addition to her teaching experience here, Walker has taught two years of broadcasting and editing at Alcorn State University in Michigan. She also worked in public relations before beginning her advanced degrees; as she has proven with her time here, Ms. Walker is a very capable teacher and scholar, able to make a contribution anywhere she goes.