First act
Staying is believing
In 1998, David Stanton, JM 2002, MAMC 2005, ventured to Gainesville from Palm City to start his freshman year at UF. Ten years later, he calls his former professors by their first names. They’re now colleagues.
To complete his doctoral research on news-reading patterns and to play a part in the College’s media convergence, Stanton turned down permanent job offers at Northwestern and Auburn universities to accept a one-year visiting professorship in the Department of Journalism.
“I’m here because, I think in the long run, this is the best place for me to combine real-world journalism with rigorous scientific research,” he said. “I’m really interested in the strategic vision of the College.”
Feeling the College is further ahead in terms of research and news convergence, Stanton embraced the challenges here instead of starting with more basic coursework at another program, Prof. David Carlson said.
It’s uncommon to hire a doctoral student from the same program because schools want to provide their students with new perspectives, Dean John W. Wright said.
The transition from student to professor has been smooth, Stanton said. Because he’s known teachers such as Master Lecturer Mike Foley, JM 1970, MAMC 2004, and Associate Prof. Ted Spiker for more than eight years, there’s been no “social awkwardness.” He has also worked closely with Carlson and Prof. Mindy McAdams in the department’s online journalism courses.
“They’ve always treated me like I knew what I was doing,” he said.
From student to colleague
In high school, Stanton applied to only one university, sending in his application on deadline day. He first enrolled in UF’s mechanical engineering program to follow in his dad and brother’s footsteps. He also has a knack for mathematics and science.
By the end of his sophomore year, however, Stanton found himself writing short stories instead of doing his physics and engineering coursework.
“I wasn’t enthused about mechanical engineering,” he said. So he switched to journalism.
He worked as a writer, assistant news editor and news editor of The Gator Times, a semi-weekly newspaper, and as a photographer for a few months at the Lake City Reporter. He shot assignments ranging from sports events to a murder court case and a bank robbery. He also wrote feature stories for The Gainesville Sun and Gainesville Magazine, freelanced for Men’s Health magazine, worked in corporate communications and served as a consultant for statistical analysis and Web development.
The first course Stanton taught at UF was as a lab instructor for Communication on the Internet in 2004. The class has more than doubled in size in the past year, Carlson said. Last year, 70 students filled the seats. Since the emphasis in online communication and online reporting has grown, the College added four sections, for a total of seven and more than 140 students.
Stanton teaches three Communication on the Internet sections and a capstone course, Applied Electronic Publishing.
In the classroom, Stanton strives to help his students understand the reasons for using techniques and the toolset to accomplish them.
“I really want to help students be able to teach themselves,” Stanton said.
In his capstone course, he might have 10 seniors, each of whom has a different goal: One may want to code Web sites, another may want to do video, while the rest may be interested in the reporting aspect of online media.
“I never wanted to be a reporter,” said Jenna Hodgkiss, JM 2006, lead technical producer at the Tampa-based New York Times Media Group. “He really catered it to what we were trying to do … so I got to work on coding.”
Hodgkiss and other alumni, including Stephanie Rosenblatt, JM 2007, a Flash programmer and multimedia producer at The Miami Herald, and Brett Roegiers, JM 2007, a multimedia producer at CNN, audited Stanton’s course online over the summer to learn new techniques and to share with other students how the course material applied to their jobs.
“People really respect his willingness to find out what they’re all about,” Hodgkiss said. “Even now when I hear about a job opening, I let him know and he can think about who it might be a good fit for. He wants everyone to try hard, but he also doesn’t harbor unrealistic beliefs that everyone was made to code.”
One man, many hobbies
Wrapped under his father’s arm at the age of 6, Stanton developed a love for scuba diving when he was too small to support the weight of the gear. He now has professional ratings and has been instructing for about four years at the Aquatic Center in Butler Plaza. He credits scuba diving for helping him become a better classroom instructor.
“It helped me get a perspective that every class is not lectures and tests,” he said.
He takes an electric scooter to class, plays golf at UF’s Mark Bostick Golf Course and shoots hoops on Tuesday mornings with his colleagues. They play two-on-two or three-on-three, sometimes for Burrito Brothers lunches.
Stanton and his wife, Autumn, whom he met in Gainesville in 2002, have two daughters, Lucy, 3, and Tabitha, 1. The Auburn University graduate co-owns Do Art, a paint-it-yourself pottery and mosaic studio in Thornebrook Village.
At home, Stanton likes to break out his guitar but finds it “tough to crank up the amp when the girls are asleep.”
He has so many interests that he does a “spring cleaning” each year to decide which hobbies to keep and which to retire.
In 10 years, Stanton plans to be a tenured professor.
“Hopefully by then, I’ve done something substantial to help journalism flourish in this crazy, multi-platform world,” he said. “And my kids will be happy and healthy.”
This article was originally published in the Fall 2008 issue of communigator.
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