Faculty Spotlight

Dr. Keith Kenney named project manager of journalism partnership grant

By Katie Haswell, SJMC Student

Dr. Keith Kenney, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s visual communications sequence, has been named project director for a $750,000 federal grant.

The grant establishes a partnership between the SJMC and the Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management (CSJMM) in Tbilisi, Georgia. The Department of State grant allows six faculty members to each teach one semester at CSJMM and three CSJMM faculty members to complete their coursework for a doctoral degree from USC. Later, the students from Georgia will have an opportunity to defend their dissertations through Skype.

Although he pursued the grant mainly for academic reasons, Dr. Kenney also has a few selfish reasons. One of them is to help the tourism industry in Georgia.

“In Georgia there are these 90-foot medieval towers, some of the oldest in the world, and it only takes about $3,000 to restore one. I have a vague dream of raising the money to restore one of them,” he said. Dr. Kenney said that he wants to video tape the restorations to boost interest and tourism to Tbilisi and other parts of Georgia.

“I enjoy working and teaching overseas. I once taught in India and had a wonderful opportunity to work with a faculty member who was assigned to me. I wanted to shoot a video of Indian puppeteers and she went out that day and found them for me. That is something I would never had the opportunity to experience as a tourist. Sometimes I find myself far off the beaten path and I meet someone who opens a door that I never would have known existed.”

In his spare time, Dr. Kenney has created a portfolio of pictures from his travels that mask the whiteness of his office walls. If students have never been to Dr. Kenney’s office, they have not experienced the stunningly real pictures of Ugandans that hang behind him. These pictures are just one example of the passion that Dr. Kenney will bring to his role of project director in the coming years.

“I like photographing people doing things, National Geographic-type pictures of culture and visual anthropology,” he said.

Dr. Kenney, who earned his Ph.D. at Michigan State University, has been teaching at SJMC since 1988. In fall 2011, he will be the first of the six J-school faculty members to teach at CSJMM.