After several years of having one journalism professor, the English, Modern Languages and Journalism department will have someone else to assist in the education of journalism students.
Ron Feemster, professor of journalism, was hired this summer.
“We have a very active journalism program,” said Mel Storm, interim chair of the English department. “In addition to covering the academic education side of journalism performs a number of other important services for the university, one of which is The Bulletin and the other is the yearbook. It’s a huge responsibility and way too much for even so remarkable a person as Max McCoy (associate professor of journalism and adviser to The Bulletin) to handle single-handedly.”
The search to find an English Literature professor and anew Journalism professor began in the spring of 2014. A search committee consisting of McCoy and professors Cynthia Patton, Rachelle Smith, and Kevin Keinholz posted their advertisement to numerous journalism job sites, where Feemster happened to stumble upon it while teaching journalism workshops in Bhutan, a country sandwiched between China and India.
“(I) was looking for my next job because I didn’t know exactly where I was going to land when I came back. And then that one popped up,” Feemster said. “I liked the looks of the program and I liked the idea of a university of about that size – not too big – and at the same time, it’s big enough to have quite a lot of different people and different interests.”
Feemster hails from Minnesota. He has spent the last few years in Wyoming. He has two Master’s degrees in history and the philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh and in journalism from the University of Columbia. Feemster has traveled the world as a journalist and has even had some teaching gigs at smaller universities.
He spent a few years in the early 1980s as a translator in Germany, during a war between Iraq and Iran. He saw firsthand the horrible treatment of Persian refugees and wanted to get the world to see it as well.
“I was going to the immigration office, the same immigration office that they were but I was a privileged white guy from America, and these guys were really being mistreated,” Feemster said. “So I tried to get the local city magazine interested in this story and the reporters who were doing it had to back out and they invited me to write.”
In more recent years, Feemster has worked as a local reporter on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, writing about topics ranging from the reservation’s politics to their use and ownership of water rights and irrigation.
Tasha Messer, senior secondary English education major and co-editor of The Sunflower, met with Feemster during the interview process.
“Professor Feemster…was very polite and kind and I just think he seemed really excited and eager to be at Emporia State,” Messer said. “We feel like he will be a wealth of information of how to really approach touchy subjects. I think it’s just really important for that department and specifically for journalism to have him there and add to our program. You know, it helps all of the programs up there in that department to have another journalism professor.”
Messer will work with Feemster, who will serve as the adviser for the yearbook. Feemster will also be teaching Medial Law and Mass Communications.
Storm said Feemster is just what the journalism department needs.
“In journalism, you can’t just get a teacher, you can’t just get a practicing journalist,” Storm said. “You have to have somebody who can do both. If you’re being taught how to write a newspaper article, you kind of want your teacher to be somebody who’s written a newspaper articles. You need an experienced person, and he is.”
Feemster moved to Emporia Aug. 11 and began teaching on Aug. 18. An avid cyclist, he hopes to explore not only Kansas as a whole but to take up cycling in the Flint Hills.
“I’m just kind of getting my feet wet at Emporia. I look forward to meeting my colleagues, getting to know a lot of students. I’d like to see what happens with the yearbook because it’s a heck of an ambitious project if you think about it,” Feemster said. “I look forward to meeting those editors and getting to know what is going on, and I figure if I’m lucky, I’ll have some time to explore Kansas a little bit.”
