Six educators who have championed scholastic journalism through years of service have been selected to receive the National Scholastic Press Association’s Pioneer Award.
The Pioneer is NSPA’s top honor to journalism educators. Pioneers are individuals who make substantial contributions to high school publications and journalism programs outside of their primary employment.
Georgia Stilwell Dunn taught English, reading and journalism as well as advised the yearbook and newspaper at New Richmond High School for 16 years and at Wilmington High School for 12 years. While at Wilmington she was the inaugural winner of the Williams Award for outstanding teaching. Dunn also served as a consultant for all publications at her last school district.
She currently teaches in the Kent State online master’s program with her husband Wayne.
Dunn serves as managing director for the Lebanon Theatre Company, applying her journalism skills to marketing. She also designs brochures, newsletters and other informational pieces for her church.
Through her work as a mentor in the JEA-initiated program since its inception, Dunn has worked for student rights. She hopes her passion for the First Amendment is contagious with advisers and their students.
Dunn is a member of JEA and the Ohio Scholastic Media Association JEA. She was also a long-time member of GLIPA and JAOS, two of the three organizations that merged to form OSMA. She has served as the Ohio state director for JEA since 2002 and represents JEA at various workshops throughout the school year and the state convention in April. She is a presenter/speaker at regional workshops across the state and the state convention. For many years she has been a presenter at the ASNE adviser institute summer program at Kent State. Dunn is a CJE and MJE. She holds a B.S. in Education from Ohio University and an M.S. in Education from Xavier University.
Wayne Dunn retired from full-time classroom teaching in 2004, but continues to teach at workshops, conventions, ASNE Adviser Institutes and the online masters course for journalism at Kent State University. He holds a BFA from Wilmington College in Theatre and Humanities, a MA in English from Xavier University, and post-graduate work in photojournalism. He advised The Light at Lebanon (Ohio) High School for 16 years, where his efforts to practice student free speech were included in Death by Cheeseburger, a landmark book on student media censorship. He started a class that blended black-and-white photography with Photoshop. Dunn left to create a new journalism program at the new Lakota West High School. The staff embraced technology and published with digital photos and switched midyear to the first edition of InDesign. They ran much of the newsprint in color. All of these seem ordinary today, but in 1997 it was on shaky footing. The Voice earned a Pacemaker in its third year. A CJE, Dunn retired after seven years at Lakota and received the Gold Key from CSPA in 2001. Dunn and his wife Georgia were honored with JEA Lifetime Achievement awards. He was also recognized with Distinguished Adviser from DJNF. Dunn served as board president of Journalism Association of Ohio Schools, JAOS, for eight years, and helped plan to combine the three state organizations into a single, more effective organization. The Ohio Scholastic Media Association is housed at Kent State. Dunn currently serves as the board president of OSMA. Georgia and Wayne worked in tandem to become part of the first class of the JEA mentoring program. They tag-teamed with the mentees, while others worked individually. The Dunns have mentored a Rising Star, and six current members of the OSMA Board.
Bill Flechtner, MJE, is retired from teaching and advising after 45 years. He advised newspapers, yearbooks, and literary magazines at the high school and college levels. The Milwaukian newspaper he advised is in the NSPA Hall of Fame. Flechtner defended his publications several times from being subject to prior review by his district. He was also an associate professor of education at Warner Pacific College. And, has served on the boards of the Oregon Journalism Education Association and Northwest Scholastic Press. Flechtner has been the JEA Curriculum Commission chair and served on the Certification Committee. He is a Dow Jones Distinguished Adviser and an Oregon Journalism Teacher of the Year. He presents at state, regional and national journalism conferences and directed a summer adviser conference at Southern Oregon University for many years. He has been a member of the JEA Mentor Program since it began and serves on the mentor board as a mentor trainer. He is currently mentoring five new advisers in Oregon, Nevada and Hawaii.
Tom Gayda, MJE, advises the journalism program at North Central High School in Indianapolis. In addition, he is a part-time journalism instructor for Ball State University. He has taught journalism for 15 years. Outside of the classroom, Gayda has served on the Indiana High School Press Association board, been a regional director and curriculum commission chair for the Journalism Education Association and presented sessions at 31 consecutive national journalism conventions. A former member of the JEA Scholastic Press Rights Commission, Gayda is a strong supporter of student First Amendment rights, demonstrated by North Central receiving a First Amendment Press Freedom award earlier this year. This summer he published his first book, “Scholastic Journalism Leadership.” During his tenure at North Central, both The Northern Lights student newspaper and NCHS Live! Website received Pacemaker awards.
Valerie Kibler is in her 27th year of teaching and has been at Harrisonburg High School in Virginia for 17. She teaches AP English Language with an Intensive Journalistic Writing focus, freshman journalism, advanced journalism, and honors English 9. She is currently serving as co-chair of the HHS English Department and as the school’s student council sponsor. Her advanced journalism class is responsible for the publication of Newsstreak, Harrisonburg’s nationally award winning student newspaper and www.hhsmedia.com, their online publication, which has received a Pacemaker from NSPA. Kibler serves as the JEA State Director for Virginia and as Treasurer of the Virginia Association of Journalism Teachers and Advisers (VAJTA), a group that she served as director for six years. Kibler helped begin jCamp and has worked as an instructor since its inception nine years ago. She also helps organize the Virginia jDay each spring. Kibler is the 2010 Dow Jones News Fund’s National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year and has received the Gold Key Award from CSPA, SIPA’s Lifetime Achievement Award and VAJTA’s Thomas Jefferson Award. A 1988 graduate of Virginia Tech, she just received her Master’s Degree in Journalism Education from Kent State University.
Stan Zoller, MJE, in his 15th year in journalism education. Currently a Lecturer in Journalism at Lake Forest (Ill.) College, Zoller also handles projects for the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University. He judged or coordinated judging for multiple scholastic press associations. He has taught at summer workshops at Eastern Illinois University, the University of Iowa and George Mason University in Virginia. In addition to his classroom activities, Zoller is East Region Director for the Journalism Education Association and is a member of its Scholastic Press Right Commission. He has been JEA State Director for Illinois and is a member of the Illinois Journalism Education Association. He has also been a Board Member of the Kettle Moraine Press Association (KEMPA). Zoller is Vice President for Freedom of Information of the Chicago Headline Club, Chicago’s SPJ chapter, and serves on the Board of the Chicago Headline Club Foundation and Chicago Bulldog Media, a newly formed nonprofit organization to promote journalism to young journalists in Chicago. As a high school adviser, his students won a myriad of awards including state Journalists of the Year, a Silver Crown award and were twice Pacemaker finalists. Zoller was a DJNF Special Recognition Adviser in 2010 and a Distinguished Adviser in 2011. He was an ASNE fellow in 2003.
The 2014 honorees will be recognized at the Saturday, Nov. 7 luncheon at the Fall National High School Journalism Convention in Washington, D.C.