PULLMAN WSU Diversity Faculty Fellow Alex Tan recently received the President’s Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). He was honored for his leadership, particularly during the group’s three-year strategic planning process.
“When it came time to start the process, we turned to Alex, a former president of AEJMC, to help lead our members through it,” said Barbara B. Hines, association president. Tan chaired the AEJMC Strategic Planning Team as well as the AEJMC Strategic Plan Implementation Committee.
“I am particularly honored by this award because it recognizes the work of many colleagues in AEJMC who are dedicated to moving forward the organization and the field of journalism and mass communication,” Tan said.
Hines said the recipient of the President’s Award is chosen by the association’s president every year and typically is given to a “dedicated and long-serving” AEJMC member.
“The impact of Dr. Tan’s leadership on our organization has been enormous,” she said. “He is a valued scholar, mentor and mass communication educator.”
The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication has 3,600 members around the world.
Tan is a tenured professor and founding director of the Edward R. Murrow School (now College) of Communication at WSU.
He is the inaugural Faculty Diversity Fellow at WSU in the Office of the Provost and the Division of Student Affairs, Equity and Diversity. In this capacity, he has led development of a strategic plan to diversify the faculty at all WSU campuses, and he is leading implementation of the plan.
He is a co-director of the Excellence in Science and Engineering Center at WSU, which is funded by a five-year $3.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to improve the recruitment, retention and advancement of women in science and engineering.
According to Tan, a valuable aspect of reworking the AEJMC strategic plan was making sure equity and diversity issues were adequately addressed.
“In this way, I was able to share a lot of information about the diversity work we are doing at WSU,” he said.
