Jannette Dates: A Lifelong Commitment to Teaching, Scholarship, and Service

Abstract

Jannette Dates, Dean of John H. Johnson School of Communication Howard University, exemplifies a lifetime of excellence in teaching, landmark research, and a commitment to academic community. She is a true research pioneer in area of multiculturalism and media and feminists' perspectives on diversity. Her leadership Howard University, in AEJMC and BEA, and her commitment to making a difference in multicultural perspectives in study of media have earned her recognition to be included in this series of tributes to research pioneers in broadcasting. From Early Roots in Elementary Education to a Lifelong Commitment to Academia Described with affection by Connie Frazier, a colleague of over 20 years as the Energizer bunny, Jannette Dates has exemplified drive, determination, and dedication in her lifelong commitment to education, broadcasting, and issues of diversity in media (C. Frazier, personal communication, February 15, 2006). Currently Dean of John H. Johnson School of Communication Howard University, Dates began her career as a teacher and broadcaster. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in elementary education Coppin State College and her Masters in education John Hopkins University. She began her teaching career in Baltimore City Public School System, where she held title of classroom demonstration teacher and television demonstration teacher. Weekdays 9 a.m. she did school shows on local television. Later she was executive producer and on-air coanchor of a Black news magazine program titled Northstaron WBAL, NBC affiliate in Baltimore. Her career path in higher education took her to Morgan State University, where she was an assistant professor in communication arts program. While Morgan State, a colleague suggested she pursue terminal degree. She said in a 1996 videotaped interview with C. M. Lont an AEJMC conference in San Diego, at first I jokingly told him that it sounded like it was a disease (J. Dates, personal communication, August 1996). She took advice, however, and received a Ford Foundation grant to work on her Ph.D. in education administration University of Maryland College Park. She took journalism and radio-television and film courses same time, leading her to her interest in diversity and media. On completion of Ph.D. she joined faculty Howard University as an assistant professor in Department of Radio-TV-Film. Within a 13-year time period she earned rank of full professor and would eventually be appointed acting dean and dean beginning in 1993. As an academic scholar, she could not ignore lack of literature on diversity in media. Her early students Howard felt that African Americans were left out of history texts that focused on media industries. She made it her mission to seek out history of African Americans in broadcast industry and weave that information into her courses. She felt strongly that African American experience in field should be recorded, recognized, and respected. It was her goal to tell those stories to her students because leaving it out distorted history. Her philosophy was based on a goal to integrate diversity into curriculum so that students would understand context of world and better understand themselves and others. As a critical scholar she began to look effects of television on children, focus of her dissertation; she later expanded that research to general media effects. Her work has been influenced by feminist theory as well as diversity studies. Dates's longtime friend and colleague Morgan State, Tom Cripps, worked closely with her in formative years of her career. He recounts her early determination and subsequent successes. Her dissertation was an ably done study of differing responses of Black and White children to television programming. …