Hot time, summer on and off campus!

J-School faculty member Karl Gude is off in Spain with students on his pioneer Study Abroad class on design. Faculty member Cheryl Pell will be joining him in mid-June. Follow Karl’s exploits and those of his students on his blog. I’ve included one of the photos he has sent so far of MSU students working with their Spanish peers and a video from the group's recent trip to the Guggenheim Museum.

The Detroit News and the J-School is beginning work on executing the Tandem project, one of three developed by students as part of an Innovation Incubator project that received a Knight Challenge grant last year. Programming being developed will hopefully seed grassroots efforts by media across the country in this unique experiment in community journalism

The State News and student projects or publications from the J-School’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism national finalists announced Monday in the annual Society of Professional Journalists student journalism contest. Translation--that means they were second or third in the nation.

The State News was ranked as on of the Best All-Around Daily Student Newspapers in the nation. Many of our majors works as editors, reporters, photographers and designers on the daily newspaper.

Knight Center winners were:

Online In-Depth Reporting for “Pine River Superfund Site” published on the Great Lakes Wiki. Andy Balaskovitz, John Allison and Ian Walker.

TV In-Depth Reporting for “Dying to be Heard” which was broadcast on WKAR and other public broadcasting stations. Ben Phillips, Karly Pence and Kevin Wilt. (This was the first project of the environmental documentary film class.)

Best Student Magazine to the staff of EJ Magazine.

Each of these award winners placed first in the same categories at the regional level to be considered in the national contest.

Congratulations to one and all!

In other J-School news, Louis D’Aria and his video documentary students have completed their second film in the Knight Center's on going "environment" series. This program, based on a story written by J-School alum Alicia Clarke and published in EJ, documents her experiences as a student researcher on one of four icebreakers in the Arctic.

Her story was expanded to include MSU faculty and student research on global warming.

The documentary is the output of the JRN 408 / 808 class and involves students from the J-School and from TISM, theater, zoology, music, and fisheries and wildlife.

The program is set to air at 9 p.m., Tuesday, June 17 on WKAR and again at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday. June 19. The hope is the program will be rebroadcast by other PBS stations in the state and the nation. Great work, Lou and students!