Terry’s tenure
A Dean's Dozen: Terry Hynes has occupied this chair since 1994. (Photo by Andrea Morales)
The College scales new heights during Dean Hynes’ 12 years
Being a woman turned into an asset – and a liability – for Terry Hynes when she became UF’s second female college dean (besides nursing) in 1994. “It was an issue,” Assistant Dean Jon Roosenraad recalled. “There was skepticism among the old guard.” Compounding the challenge, Hynes faced stepping into a role molded for 18 years by a popular and respected dean – Ralph Lowenstein.
“It was like following [Steve] Spurrier,” Roosenraad said, referring to the former Gators football coach.
But Lowenstein rooted for Hynes and introduced her to such key players as St. Petersburg Times Editor Paul Tash.
“I’m impressed that she’s kept close links to the profession,” said Tash, Times Publishing Company chairman and CEO.
Another former dean – the late Rae Weimer – also guided Hynes in his distinct style. “He sized me up at our first meeting,” recalled Hynes, who heads to the UF University Relations office July 1 after 12 years as dean. “The smile and handshake said, ‘Welcome, I think you can do this job.’ Simultaneously, though, the look in his eyes said, ‘You better not mess this up.’”
By most accounts, Weimer would approve of Hynes’ accomplishments, which include:
Strengthening the faculty. Replacing an unusually large number of retiring professors in recent years and adding 10 faculty positions for a total of 70, Hynes never sacrificed quality.
“She’s encouraged us to hire top-notch people,” said Department of Telecommunication Chair Dave Ostroff, “which we have.”
One example is Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalism Prof. John Kaplan, who has won an Overseas Press Club and other awards since he joined the faculty in 1999.
College search committees embraced Hynes’ vision of non-compromising, comprehensive standards, noted telecommunication Prof. Sandra Dickson. “Terry’s emphasized hiring faculty with a national reputation or with the potential to develop a national reputation.”
Laurence Alexander
Under Hynes, faculty members delivered in their scholarship and in the classroom, noted Department of Journalism Chair William McKeen. “It’s not coincidence that we’ve had two national teachers of the year” – Associate Prof. Sandra Chance, JM 1975, MAMC 1985 (2005) and Prof. Laurence Alexander, MAMC 1983 (2002).
“Our faculty members in each of the four departments are the envy of any journalism and communications program,” said Executive Associate Dean John Wright, who becomes interim dean July 1 (see story).
Welcoming the alumni. By attending professional conferences, holding College events around the country, meeting with alumni in their cities and homes, and inviting alumni to such functions as the Homecoming brunch, Hynes has kept the growing legions of graduates involved in shaping the College.
“She did a good job bringing alums together,” said Del Galloway, PR 1981, MAMC 1983, former president and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and a PR Advisory Council member. “She’s certainly reached out to me.”
She encouraged all four advisory councils to help the College improve, said Margo Pope, JM 1970, a member of the Journalism Advisory Council.
“I have appreciated her candor and her understanding of our views and perceptions,” the St. Augustine Record associate editor said.
Being heard is just the first step as far as alumni are concerned; they want to see their suggestions implemented whenever possible. For instance, after the council brought up students’ lack of lab time, Pope noted, Hynes extended the hours.
Spotlighting the students. From supporting the Journalism and Communications Ambassadors to celebrating student achievements, Hynes has made sure the students remain the pivotal players in the College’s game plan.
“She was always on the lookout for potential clients for our Campaigns class,” Department of Advertising Chair John Sutherland said. “We are working with the Cancer Institute as a result of her effort.”
Building Public Relations. Hynes doubled the department’s faculty to 11 and boosted morale, Prof. Linda Hon, MAMC 1986, noted. “I never felt like a second-class citizen.”
The communication world took notice, Galloway said. “Terry propelled our program.”
She did the same for the other departments, according to faculty members and administrators.
“While a journalist by trade,” Sutherland said, “she had a spot for advertising in her heart.”
Solidifying scholarship. The College has metamorphosed in recent years into a research greenhouse that’s well on its way to becoming a powerhouse. Hynes set higher expectations and tackled the processes needed to usher in a new culture, Sutherland said. She engaged the faculty in the “writing of a formal statement of our tenure and promotion guidelines, enabling us to clearly focus on important issues and increasing the publication record of the College faculty.”
She supported allowing new faculty members to focus solely on research during their first summer, Kaplan noted. “It helps them hit the ground running on a path of productivity.”
Cultivating creativity. Under Hynes, the College stretched its spectrum of scholarship. “Terry understands that a diversity of ways can produce scholarship,” said Hon, the public relations department’s graduate coordinator who conducts “traditional research” and publishes it in refereed journals.
Assistant Prof. Ted Spiker’s creative activities include writing for such magazines as Men’s Health, Outside and Oprah and co-authoring the bestseller YOU: The Owner’s Manual.
“Terry respects and supports the creative activities and sees them as a legitimate track,” Spiker said. “Not all programs are like that.”
Striking a balance between the College’s professional preparation and academic achievement. Hynes has turned these often competing entities into the College’s one-two punch.
Paul Tash
“Both are equally important,” Tash said.
After 28 years at the St. Petersburg Times, Tash is in a particularly good position to evaluate the former.
“She assured that students receive strong professional training,” he said. “A number of alums have gone on to accomplished careers here at the paper. We always expect good things of them, as soon as they come in as interns.”
Although, as master lecturer, Mike Foley, JM 1970, MAMC 2004, is not expected to conduct research, he believes it contributes to professionals’ practice and to students’ learning.
Managing theory, practice and people with diverse talents and skills poses quite a challenge, said Foley, former Times executive editor. “A good balance is hard to achieve. I know. I’ve been in administration. And I reported to just one boss. Terry has a lot of people to report to – up and down.”
Spanning the globe. The College has added several international programs, such as the Florida Fly-Ins. In each of the past six fall semesters, Kaplan has led a group of journalism, public relations and multi-media students to a region in a Latin American country to gather images and words for an exhibition and an online magazine. He “cooked up this idea over coffee at the Reitz Union,” he said, with Prof. Emeritus Kurt Kent.
Joined by McKeen, they expected to gain little traction when they proposed the course to Hynes. But she surprised them. “Her eyes lit up and she said, ‘Let’s see what we can do,’ ” McKeen recalled. The program soon took off, lifted in its first five years by a St. Petersburg Times grant.
Specializing in specializations. Hynes tapped into faculty expertise by encouraging the development of graduate programs such as science-health communication and political communication.
“It’s important that topics like global warming and Intelligent Design aren’t over-simplified in the media,” Hynes said. “They’re complicated and need people who understand them and can communicate them in a clear way. In addition, we wanted to work in areas where we could partner with other major UF strengths.”
Seeing the big picture for the Documentary Institute. Meeting Co-Director Churchill Roberts at an Austin conference in the mid-1990s, Hynes learned he was considering moving the institute from the University of West Florida to the University of Texas. “I thought, ‘Why should it go to another state?’ ” she said. “It was the piece missing from our television curriculum. We needed a vehicle for teaching long-form video journalism.”
After consulting with then-Department of Telecommunication Chair Les Smith to see if his faculty would support the move, Hynes gained approval from then-UF President John Lombardi and Provost Betty Capaldi. “I think John and Betty said yes at first partly because they thought it was a crazy idea, too wild ever to succeed,” Hynes recalled. “Moving four faculty and an entire program from one university to another is no easy task. But it was a wonderful team effort. The institute faculty reached out to their contacts, including some in the state Legislature; UF reached out to ours, and with the support of the administration and faculty, we landed a gem for UF.”
Once in a lifetime: The College's four deans — Ralph Lowenstein, John Paul Jones Jr. (seated), Terry Hynes and Rae Weimer — got together in 1994.
Co-director Dickson moved to Weimer Hall in fall 1996. Roberts, Cindy Hill and Cara Pilson joined her the following semester. Their UF-based documentaries – Negroes with Guns, Freedom Never Dies and Angel of Ahlem, which they plan to finish this year – have garnered national attention through PBS broadcasts, industry prizes and New York Times features. And their students have made award-winning documentaries and landed jobs at such companies as Discovery Channel. “Terry’s so enthusiastic,” Dickson said, “that we want to make her proud.”
Sending the right signal about the College’s TV and radio stations. Through her fundraising efforts, Hynes has amplified the stations’ abilities to deliver quality programming and provide a sound training ground for students, said WUFT-TV General Manager Rick Lehner. “The support for news programming has increased dramatically.”
Being resourceful. Hynes has made sure the faculty and students benefited directly from the philanthropic funds the College has brought in during the past 12 years.
“This has allowed us to have more funding for travel, including graduate student travel,” Wright said, “[along with] more graduate assistantships, more funding for research summers, and more for information-technology needs.”
It adds up to a productive work environment, said telecommunication Prof. Sylvia Chan-Olmsted. “So much of your performance depends on tools. Terry has provided me the resources to excel.”
But not everything Hynes has done has been well-received. In particular, she’s been criticized for micromanaging the budget (see story) and for failing to communicate better with the faculty.
“She’s made decisions that some people don’t agree with,” Ostroff said. “That’s natural. But over the years, they accumulate.”
A dozen years is a long time for most deans, he noted. A great deal has changed.
“The College is far more complex today,” he said. “It’s bigger – and that’s good and bad. We have more faculty and a lot more happening. But it’s more difficult for any dean to manage.”
It’s difficult to assess Hynes’ contributions at this stage, said former Poynter Institute President Bob Haiman, JM 1958.
“The true mark of a newspaper editor or a college dean only becomes fully visible with some perspective and history,” said the former St. Petersburg Times editor. “It will take 10 years.”
‘Interesting questions’
Hynes’ Irish immigrant father Michael, a truck driver who barely finished high school, read all of Boston’s tabloids and broadsheets every day.
In those ink-stained papers, she found “all kinds of things for kids – contests, puzzles, clues about different cities. It was fun to see if I could figure them out. And it attracted me to a diversity of content.”
Her parents, who grew up 12 miles apart in the Old Country, met at a dance in Boston when Michael was engaged to marry another Irish immigrant. It made no difference, when he saw Bea, he “was a goner,” Hynes said.
Hynes’ childhood recollections include playing and fighting, sometimes using sharp objects, with her two older brothers. Small knife scars mark her hands – testaments to her tussles with Frank. But these cuts also evoke sweet memories, such as Frank letting go of her bicycle for the first time, saying assuredly, “Just pedal.”
“It was a simple time,” she said. “We didn’t have much money.”
The best things in her life – including school – were free. In high school, she befriended three drama students who, with her addition, became known as the Four Musketeers. “They opened a whole new world of thinking for me,” she said. “They would ask interesting questions.”
They socialized over sundaes at Howard Johnson and compared homework answers on the phone. This was the kind of peer pressure a father could accept.
“He told me to always get the best education,” Hynes recalled. “He’d say, ‘No one can ever take that away from you.’ I can still hear his voice saying those words.”
After earning a bachelor’s in English from Regis College in Weston, Mass., Hynes kept going and going, like the Energizer scholar. Studying for a master’s in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she thought, “Gee, I’d like to get another degree and learn about another field.”
Going west
A doctorate in mass communication from Wisconsin-Madison in hand, Hynes headed to the Department of Communications at California State University, Fullerton.
“I always wanted to go to California,” she said. “I figured I’d stay two years.”
She stayed 19, the last four as chair of the department, which had grown to serve 3,000 students. She became so attached to the commuter campus of 20,000 students that she turned down a University of Southern California job offer after teaching there for a year as a visiting professor.
She devoted herself to Cal State. She spent six hours preparing for each 50-minute journalism history or basic communication writing class. “I had no life,” she said, “but it paid off.” She steadily took on more academic, administrative and service responsibilities, gaining an insight into other communication fields besides journalism, including advertising, public relations and telecommunication. And she became involved nationally. She took on leadership roles in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). And she represented AEJMC on the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC). “We only had $100 a year for travel at Cal State,” she said, “but since I have no family of my own, I decided to invest the extra expense and time in developing my professional expertise.”
In 1990, she ran against Lowenstein for the AEJMC presidency. She lost by 12 votes. The following year, she took on another candidate and won. She also filled ACEJMC’s highest academic position, vice president.
“She’s been a national leader in our field for a quarter of a century,” said Doug Anderson, dean of Penn State’s College of Communications and chair of ACEJMC’s national Accrediting Committee.
Seconds away
In 1994, Hynes was seconds away from becoming director of the School of Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond when she received the offer from UF.
A week earlier, she had called then-UF Provost Andrew Sorensen to say she had another offer but was still interested in the College of Journalism and Communications position. He said he’d make his decision by the following Monday. She told VCU officials she’d let them know Tuesday.
On Monday, Sorensen called to tell her he’d let her know by 3 p.m. Eastern Standard time the next day.
When noon passed in California on Tuesday, she assumed Sorensen chose another finalist and decided to accept VCU’s offer. She called the VCU dean, but his secretary said he was at a meeting across campus and would be unavailable until after 5 p.m.
Ten minutes later, Sorensen called.
“He spent seven to eight minutes going back and forth between Doug Anderson [one of the other two finalists] and me,” Hynes said. “I remember thinking that this must have been when [Sorensen] finally stopped to think through his decision.”
Anderson, then-director of Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, had no idea it came down to him or Hynes. “I was just flattered to be considered,” he said.
In her gut, Hynes felt Sorensen had picked Anderson.
“He kept going back and forth,” she said, “and Doug is such a terrific person and professional. I thought it was a smart way to let me down.”
Sorensen wasn’t done thinking out loud.
“When he got to the end, he said, ‘So I’ve decided …,’ and as soon as he said my name, I thought, ‘Oh, yes, this is it, this is the job,’ “ Hynes recalled. “I accepted on the spot, before I even negotiated a salary.”
Sorensen’s decision may have caught some by surprise – but not Chance.
“To me, it was a clear choice,” said the executive director of the College’s Joseph L. Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, who holds a J.D. from UF’s Levin College of Law. “Terry had the experience, the vision and the commitment to excellence to take us to the next level.”
Hynes delivered on this promise, faculty members and alumni said.
“Her legacy is that of optimism,” McKeen said. “She made us believe we can do whatever we want.”
