Partnership between the organizations expands with enthusiasm from students and communities
Vermont Business Magazine On Wednesday, the University of Vermont and Vermont Public launched a joint search for a new faculty position to oversee student opportunities in all aspects of public media. The new role marks the expansion of a successful partnership between the two organizations, which began in 2022 with a mission to provide students immersive opportunities in local news and to expand the range of voices on Vermont Public airwaves. The new faculty position will be part of the English Department in the UVM College of Arts & Sciences.
“With the creation of this role, we are formalizing our commitment to a thriving local news ecosystem and Vermont communities, in partnership with our friends at Vermont Public,” said UVM College of Arts & Sciences Dean Bill Falls. “The hands-on experience this work provides our students has been exceptional, so this is an investment in a core priority.”
A committee of UVM faculty, staff, and Vermont Public professionals will collaborate on the hiring process. The anticipated start date is July 2024.
“This partnership is a win for everyone,” said Vermont Public President and CEO Scott Finn. “Students receive an immersive experience that opens doors to a range of meaningful careers, and our audience hears and sees stories they’d never find otherwise.”
This announcement builds on the success of UVM’s expanding opportunities for students to engage with local news reporting and civics. The Community News Service, which oversees the creation of hundreds of student-reported stories in dozens of Vermont news outlets each year, continues to grow in size and scope. It was the inspiration for the Center for Community News (CCN), a national nonprofit at UVM that is working to grow news-academic partnerships around the country today. Partnerships with public media is a priority area for CCN.
In tandem with the announcement of this new role, the Center for Community News released on Monday its first-ever nationwide survey on the state of university-public radio news partnerships. Findings revealed that, while there are 182 university-licensed public radio stations in the U.S., most stations surveyed do not have reliable reporting partnerships with their host universities and 91% want to collaborate more.
“Public media stations and U.S. colleges are already aligned on many key values,” said CCN Executive Director Richard Watts. “Both are mission-driven, with a commitment to educate, enrich, and strengthen civic engagement. These are natural partnerships that can help fill critical local news gaps. With this survey, we’ve identified the untapped potential and obstacles to growth.”
The Center for Community News is working to grow public media-university partnerships around the country, informed by the success it has documented at stations like KBIA at the University of Missouri, WUFT at the University of Florida, and the University of Illinois student newsroom at Illinois Public Media. Such partnerships are providing sustainable and trustworthy local news for the long term in their communities, and reinforcing a culture of civic engagement across generations.
According to Watts, “UVM’s partnership with Vermont Public will serve as a model for other universities around the country.”
You can find more about the Center for Community News and its latest report at https://www.uvm.edu/ccn
About CCN
The Center for Community News at UVM is a nonpartisan nonprofit that is working to grow and strengthen university-led reporting programs around the country, to create a more sustainable future for local news outlets and the communities they serve.
About the University of Vermont
Since 1791, the University of Vermont has worked to move humankind forward. UVM’s strengths align with the most pressing needs of our time: the health of our societies and the health of our environment. Our size—large enough to offer a breadth of ideas, resources, and opportunities, yet intimate enough to enable close faculty-student mentorship across all levels of study—allows us to pursue these interconnected issues through cross-disciplinary research and collaboration. Providing an unparalleled educational experience for our students, and ensuring their success, are at the core of what we do. As one of the nation’s first land grant universities, UVM advances Vermont and the broader society through the discovery and application of new knowledge. UVM is derived from the Latin Universitas Viridis Montis (in English, University of the Green Mountains).
Source: 11.8.2023. BURLINGTON, Vt. — University of Vermont
