Christopher Callahan, founding dean of ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication on the Downtown campus, was named Journalism Administrator of the Year by the Scripps Howard Foundation.
Under Callahan’s leadership since he joined the school in 2005, the Cronkite school has added several new professional programs including the Cronkite News Service, the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, the New Media Innovation Lab, ABC News on Campus, the Carnegie-Knight News21 digital media initiative and Cronkite NewsWatch, an evening newscast that airs on PBS in Arizona.
“No journalism-mass communication dean at a university in the United States can match — or come close to — Chris’ accomplishments at ASU during the past five years,” said Doug Anderson, a former winner of the award and dean of the College of Communications at The Pennsylvania State University. “The strides that the school has made under his high-voltage leadership are nothing short of astonishing.”
During his tenure at ASU, Callahan has doubled the number of faculty members at the Cronkite school.
In a statement, Callahan said he was humbled by the award, but a lot of the credit goes to others in the ASU community.
“We also have fantastic media partners, great support from foundations, corporations and individuals, a leader in President Michael Crow who understands and embraces the importance of a high-quality journalism education, and now a state-of-the-art teaching facility,” Callahan said in a statement. “With all of that, it’s pretty hard to go wrong.”
Callahan will receive $10,000 and the Charles E. Scripps Award for Journalism Administration.
— State Press staff reports
