Faculty
Tom Linden, M.D.
Tom Linden, M.D., is director of the Science and Medical Journalism Program and Glaxo Wellcome Distinguished Professor of Medical Journalism in the School of Media and Journalism. Faculty from both the MJ-school and the Gillings School of Global Public Health teach required courses in the master’s program. A number of distinguished guest lecturers also work with the program’s students.
If you’re interested in reading a book that offers how-to tips for aspiring medical journalists, check out the “The New York Times Reader: Health & Medicine” (2011, CQ Press) by Dr. Linden. For more information about educational opportunities in science and medical journalism, read Dr. Linden’s article, “Learning To Be a Medical Journalist,” in Nieman Reports. You can also read an essay by Dr. Linden in the journal Electronic News about ethical issues raised by television doctors reporting on the Haitian earthquake.
Kate Sheppard
Kate Sheppard is a Teaching Associate Professor in the School of Media and Journalism. Her work focuses on the intersection of science, public policy and politics. She has a particular interest in environment and energy, but has covered a range of issues as a newspaper, magazine and online journalist. She is currently an enterprise editor at HuffPost, and previously reported for Mother Jones, Grist and the American Prospect. Her writing has been recognized with awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Online News Association and the Deadline Club, and featured in the Best American Science and Nature Writing. She is a past board member and vice president of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and also serves as a board member for Street Sense and the Washington Youth Summit on the Environment.
Core MA Faculty
Lucinda Austin
Lucinda Austin joined the faculty in July 2016 and teaches courses in public relations and strategic communication. Her research focuses on social media’s influence on strategic communication initiatives, namely health and crisis communication, and explores publics’ perspectives in corporate social responsibility and organization-public relationship building.
Austin has published work in journals including Communication Research, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Health Communication, Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, Public Relations Journal, and Social Marketing Quarterly. Dr. Austin has been a recipient of AEJMC’s Promising Professors Award, AEJMC Public Relations Division’s SuPRstar Award, the Arthur W. Page Center’s Legacy Educator and Legacy Scholar Awards, and NCA’s PRIDE Award. Dr. Austin earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she was recipient of the 2011 Charles Richardson Most Outstanding Ph.D. Student Award and the 2009 Outstanding Teaching Award.
Before joining the faculty, Austin was an assistant professor of Strategic Communications at Elon University where she taught courses in communications research, strategic campaigns, strategic writing, and health communications and served as Associate Director of Elon’s Honors Program. Her professional experience includes work for the Center of Risk Communication Research at the University of Maryland and for ICF International, a firm offering communication support to Federal government and nonprofit organizations, including the CDC, HHS, FEMA, and the American Red Cross.
Victoria “Tori” Smith Ekstrand
Victoria “Tori” Smith Ekstrand teaches media law courses in the school. Before coming to Carolina, she was an associate professor in the Bowling Green State University Department of Journalism and Public Relations and an affiliate faculty member of BGSU’s American Cultural Studies department.
Ekstrand’s research explores conflicts between copyright law and the First Amendment, particularly as they arise in journalism and social media. Her work is often grounded in critical legal theory, in which she examines the impact of law and policy on culture and media production. In this vein, she has begun investigating online accessibility for the disabled as a First Amendment issue. She has also written about legal protections for anonymous speech online.
Ekstrand is an expert on the hot news doctrine, a part of unfair competition law that protects the facts of news for a short period. Her revised book on the subject, Hot News in the Age of Big Data: A Legal History of the Hot News Doctrine and Implications for the Digital Age (LFB Scholarly), looks at the history of the doctrine and its impact on protections for discrete bits of information in the age of Big Data. It will be published in 2016.
She has published articles in Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal and Communication Law & Policy. She has worked with the Ohio State Bar Association on the publication of their Media Law Handbook. In 2008, she was awarded BGSU’s Outstanding Young Scholar Award, and in 2009, she was named a Scholar in Residence at BGSU’s Institute for Culture & Society. She is currently serving as Communications Director for the UNC Center for Media Law & Policy.
Before teaching, Ekstrand worked for The Associated Press in their New York headquarters for nearly a decade. She served as AP’s director of Corporate Communications, responsible for marketing, public relations and events for the worldwide news agency.
Paul Cuadros
Paul Cuadros is an award-winning investigative reporter and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Time magazine, Salon.com, The Chicago Reporter, and other national and local publications. He joined the school in 2007.
For the past 20 years, Cuadros has focused his reporting on issues of race and poverty in America. In 1999, he won a fellowship with the Alicia Patterson Foundation, sponsored by New York Newsday and considered one of the most prestigious fellowships in journalism, to report on emerging Latino communities in rural poultry-processing towns in the South. The culmination of his reporting was his book, “A Home on the Field: How One Championship Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America,” which tells the story of Siler City, N.C., as it copes and struggles with Latino immigration through the lives of a predominantly Latino high school soccer team.
“A Home on the Field” was the summer reading selection at UNC in 2009. He is the only faculty member at UNC to have his book selected as summer reading. The book has been chosen for summer reading programs at other universities in North Carolina and beyond.
Cuadros is a co-recipient of the 2006 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, Team Award, for his contribution to the radio series “North Carolina Voices: Understanding Poverty” broadcast on WUNC-FM. He has won the National Association of Hispanic Journalist’s award for online reporting, and he won the UNC Diversity Award in 2012 for his work on campus opening doors for minority students, faculty and staff.
Cuadros serves as the chair and executive director of the UNC Scholars’ Latino Initiative, a three-year mentoring and college preparatory program between UNC students and Latino high school students at six area high schools. The program has more than 150 students and is housed at the Center for Global Initiatives. Cuadros is also the co-founder of the Carolina Latina/o Collaborative, which is the Latino educational and cultural center at UNC. He is also co-founder of the Latina/o Caucus, a university coalition of faculty and staff on campus that advocates for Latino interests at the university.
Cuadros is involved in a documentary film production and episodic series for Nuyorican Productions Inc. that is based on his book and chronicles the lives of Latino youth on the soccer team he coaches in Siler City.
He is working on his second book on migration.
Laura Ruel
Laura Ruel is an associate professor of design, user experience and interactive media for the school’s visual communication sequences.
Since 2009, she has been the executive producer of UNC’s Powering a Nation project, a student-created, interactive media site that explores the implication of U.S. Energy use.
Her research interests include examining user behavior and cognitive processes in the age of interactive media. She uses eyetracking technologies to explore these issues, and is part of the FDA’s Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science research at UNC. In addition, she conducts practical usability and eytracking research studies for the news media. She also was a project leader for the Poynter Institute‘s Eyetrack III research, a study that examined online news consumer behavior in the digital age.
Before coming to the School of Media and Journalism in July of 2004, she was the inaugural executive director of the Edward W. Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media, an educational organization in the School of Communication at the University of Denver.
She is the founder and original coordinator of the Society for News Design‘s Best of Digital Design competition.
Before joining the academic world in fall of 2000, she worked for more than 15 years in the journalism industry as a reporter, editor, designer and manager at a number of newspapers and magazines including the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Omaha World-Herald and the Denver Rocky Mountain News.
Laura has taught journalism at the University of Denver, Creighton University and the University of Maine, and was part of a faculty team who trained the Web staff of China’s Guangzhou Daily News Group in 2001 and 2005.
She is a past board member of the Society for News Design and the 2015 recipient of the Edward Vick Prize for Innovation in Teaching. She also is the recipient of local, state, national and international awards for her reporting and design work.
is an associate professor of design, user experience and interactive media for the school’s visual communication sequences.
Since 2009, she has been the executive producer of UNC’s Powering a Nation project, a student-created, interactive media site that explores the implication of U.S. Energy use.
Her research interests include examining user behavior and cognitive processes in the age of interactive media. She uses eyetracking technologies to explore these issues, and is part of the FDA’s Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science research at UNC. In addition, she conducts practical usability and eytracking research studies for the news media. She also was a project leader for the Poynter Institute‘s Eyetrack III research, a study that examined online news consumer behavior in the digital age.
Before coming to the School of Media and Journalism in July of 2004, she was the inaugural executive director of the Edward W. Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media, an educational organization in the School of Communication at the University of Denver.
She is the founder and original coordinator of the Society for News Design‘s Best of Digital Design competition.
Before joining the academic world in fall of 2000, she worked for more than 15 years in the journalism industry as a reporter, editor, designer and manager at a number of newspapers and magazines including the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Omaha World-Herald and the Denver Rocky Mountain News.
Laura has taught journalism at the University of Denver, Creighton University and the University of Maine, and was part of a faculty team who trained the Web staff of China’s Guangzhou Daily News Group in 2001 and 2005.
She is a past board member of the Society for News Design and the 2015 recipient of the Edward Vick Prize for Innovation in Teaching. She also is the recipient of local, state, national and international awards for her reporting and design work.