College’s State Department institute finishes second summer in strong fashion
In 1976, 18-year-old Jouma Mohamed M. ElFotaysi received a full scholarship to leave Libya and attend a university in the United States.
ElFotaysi, now a professor of mass media at Garyounis University in Libya, earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s degree in mass communication at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.
After two decades of turbulent relations between Libya and Washington, ElFotaysi returned to the U.S. this summer along with 17 scholars and professionals from around the world to participate in the College’s State Department U.S. Institute on Journalism and Media.
The College created the institute last year as a six-week program with a $275,000 grant from the U.S. State Department. This year, it received $280,000. It plans for apply for a third summer grant.
An evolving program
Between Fourth of July fireworks, merengue dancing lessons and barbeques, institute participants attended discussions on the future of journalism, new technologies and other related topics.
“For me, it’s a very strong, intense experience,” institute participant Maia Mikashavidze said, “because I have not had a class that I would be only mildly interested in.”
Last year, many participants received too much information and not enough time to absorb and meet with other professors and colleagues, said the institute’s academic director, telecommunication Lecturer Lauren Hertel. Based on last year’s evaluations, the program incorporated more sessions on online journalism and practical training and reduced class time by one-third.
This year, participants finished sessions by 3 p.m. and had Wednesdays to work on their research and participate in local media internships.
The institute also had a different composition with a stronger representation of Arabic-speaking countries, fewer participants from Eastern Europe and one non-academic professional.
The institute program inspired UF’s Department of Political Science to successfully apply for a State Department-funded institute. This is the first time two State Department institutes ran at the same time in the same university.
The College assisted the Institute of United States Foreign Policy. The institutes held joint activities, including a barbeque and a day trip to St. Augustine.
From founder to student
When she arrived and saw Florida palm trees, Mikashavidze felt as if she were on a vacation. An institute participant from Georgia, she’s the founding dean of a school of journalism with 20 faculty members.
Working at the U.S. Embassy in Georgia, Mikashavidze was doing media support projects, helping newspapers and sending professionals to the United States when she decided to start the school in 2000.
She sought to establish the Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management as an alternative to Georgia’s public universities, which tend to be theoretical and often lack practical curricula. The school instructs 45 to 50 graduate students and offers two degrees: Journalism and Media Management, and Journalism and Communication.
The school espouses Western journalism principles such as unbiased reporting and accuracy.
“We were the first to start teaching it – things that you take for granted in your country because you have 200 years of tradition,” Mikashavidze said.
She and her team used only American professors in the beginning and later sent Georgian faculty abroad to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge to train. Now, the budding school has more Georgian faculty than American faculty. It has more than doubled the number of its graduates, to 45.
Mikashavidze brought back ways to achieve nonpartisan journalism.
“I feel safe and sure that we [Georgia] have freedom of journalism in a sense that any opinion will get to viewers,” Mikashavidze said. “I am not so sure of the quality of journalism.”
26 years of separation
During his six years in South Carolina, ElFotaysi stayed with the same host family and returned to Libya every summer. Starting out speaking little English, it took him six months to reach a satisfactory level of communication.
“National occasions, weddings, when someone passes away – all these things I missed because I was away,” ElFotaysi said. “This gap got filled by my host family.”
After completing his master’s degree in 1982, ElFotaysi became general manager of the Libyan National Broadcasting Network. He’s worked in many departments, including news editing, and he’s held different positions, from chief editor of broadcasting news to superintendent of documentary films and head of the political affairs department.
ElFotaysi worked in the field as general manager for the network for four years and afterward earned his PhD in mass media at University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.
One of only six professors in the mass media department at Garyounis University, Libya’s oldest and second-largest (with about 35,000 students) public university, he’s the only professor fluent in English in his department.
ElFotaysi teaches Media Economics, International Organizations and Public Opinion, among other classes.
He planned to improve the content of his courses by incorporating the new ideas he learned from the institute, such as new methods for gathering information.
After participating in the institute, Jean Jonas Tossa plans to use new communication technologies and tools in his home country of Benin, in West Africa.
Tossa manages Atlantic FM, a public radio station that broadcasts from 6 a.m. to midnight. He plans to extend its programming to 24 hours a day. Among his many projects, he produced a documentary series, “Let Them Say.” It consists of 14-minute stories of children talking about what is on their minds and what they would do if they were president.
During the institute, Tossa learned to produce photos, audio and video for the Web. He also studied how information technologies are changing journalism.
“Today when you go reporting,” he said, “you need not go to your newsroom.”
This article was originally published in the Fall 2008 issue of communigator.
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