When I wrote the introductory note in the first edition of CMCI Now, I opened with a well-known quote from Heraclitus: “The only constant is change.”

It feels like I was writing that note just yesterday. In reality, this fall marks the beginning of CMCI’s 10th year at CU Boulder. Our journey from a brand-new college to a powerhouse of scholarly and creative excellence has been all about managing and anticipating change—from pandemic-driven lockdowns, to improving student outcomes, to ceaseless advances in technology.

The most important step on that journey may have been the first, when we sought to combine the various disciplines into CMCI and challenge our faculty, students and alumni to create impact and find value in the places where those areas overlap. Today, as we grapple with wicked problems like generative A.I. and artistic creation or how to address polarization and rescue democracy, it’s clear that one discipline doesn’t have all the answers. And when I look at the successes of our alumni—like Jordan Campbell navigating war-torn Ukraine to tell stories of resistance and resilience, or Shamika Klassen bringing a human-centered approach to a big tech company—I’m both inspired and validated by the choices we made that led us to where we are now.

If it was a big change to put information science, critical media practices, journalism and the others under one academic umbrella, then our next change may be the biggest yet. Over the summer, our integration with the university’s environmental design program— where students learn to solve design problems of the built environment—became official. I’m excited to learn from our new colleagues how the built environment represents another way for us to connect with communities, influence experiences, and advance principles like justice and sustainability. It’s already started—I had the pleasure of visiting the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse over the summer to see the work our students were doing to restore the iconic building.

Here’s to the next chapter!

Lori Bergen, PhD
Founding Dean
College of Media, Communication and Information

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Each year, at commencement, I reflect on just how far our graduates have come in just four short years. This year, I found myself more impressed than ever. Many of the young men and women who tossed their caps in the air this May arrived in Boulder as the pandemic made their first college moments virtual. Their adaptability and resilience was a source of inspiration for all of us at CMCI. 

That’s why we decided to share so many of their stories in the summer edition of our magazine. You’ll hear from each of our outstanding seniors, including our top student, Andrew Schwartz, and Bianca Perez, the first student to earn outstanding student honors for two CMCI majors. Our Trending section looks at two graduating PhD students—Saima Kazmi, who competed in CU Boulder’s Three Minute Thesis event, and Shamika Klassen, who is bringing her interests in tech, religion and ethics to Google. 

I’m so inspired to reflect on these stories of overcoming adversity, becoming leaders in our community and dreaming big about solving the challenges of tomorrow. I hope that these stories remind you of your own college experiences and how CU inspired you to become the person you are today. 

Have a great summer!

Warm regards, 
Lori Bergen
Founding dean, CMCI

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CMCI is changing the game. Literally. 

This issue of CMCI Now looks at the world of sports media, which has undergone incredible transformation—not just for athletes, but for the professionals who cover sports, whether journalists, public relations experts or social media gurus. 

The challenges facing the sports media landscape are exactly the sort of topic CMCI was designed to address—complex problems that require expertise from multiple disciplines to get a complete picture of the dynamics involved. To that end, faculty from multiple departments are involved with both our just-concluded Sports Media Summit and a new course, Prime Time: Public Performance and Leadership, that started this semester. 

Notably, neither initiative would have gotten off the ground without support from our alumni, who were featured guests in the classroom and the summit. It fills me with pride to see the pleasure our accomplished graduates have when returning to Boulder to meet with our students and seeing up close their enthusiasm about helping the next generation.

I hope we can count on your support in changing the ways we prepare students for the opportunities awaiting them after graduation. A great way to start is Buffs All In, the university-wide day of giving on March 6, which helps support scholarships and student programs, as well as travel expenses to bring these high-profile speakers to campus. , and if you’d like to share your experience with our students directly, contact our advancement team. 

Warm regards, 
Lori Bergen, PhD
Founding Dean
College of Media, Communication and Information 

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CMCI was founded amid change—an answer to how we could best organize the various communication- and information-related disciplines at CU Boulder in ways that enabled faculty collaboration and student success. We’re no stranger to disruption, so as generative A.I. tools like ChatGPT captured the public imagination early this year, I started wondering what the next chapter for communication—and education—might look like.

The dominant theme in the headlines has been one of concern, but as usual, I’ve found the best perspectives come from our alumni, students and faculty, who are on the front lines of change in these fast-moving times. In this issue, we asked members of our community for their reflections on change, and they shared insights on everything from A.I. and algorithms, to work and water.

If you find yourself overwhelmed by the enormity of the changes you’re facing, I hope you’ll find insight in this issue, which showcases how our community is researching the ways algorithms shape our worldview and the technology transforming how creative projects get done. It also offers a chance for you to reconnect with how our college is changing, including our new Washington, D.C., program.

Reading these stories helped me feel re-energized about the direction of our college and the ways our community is poised to lead through change. I may not have a crystal ball, but I’m confident that CMCI will continue to be a place where new ideas and tools are celebrated, not feared, and where possibility is embraced. I’m excited to be part of this community and to see where we go from here. And change is exciting—just look at the energy and attention Coach Prime has brought to the Buffs!

What about you? I’d love to hear your thoughts on CMCI and its future. Drop me a line or come say hello next time you’re in the Boulder area.

Lori Bergen, PhD
Founding Dean
College of Media, Communication and Information

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This year, we’re celebrating the centennial of the Department of Journalism, established April 21,1922, by the Board of Regents. As we have explored archival documents dating to the 1920s, it’s been fun to go through photos and see the changes in technology (and fashion!) over the past 100 years.

What hasn’t changed is the importance of both universities and journalism in upholding democracy. As I said in our coverage of the department’s history, the journalism industry has seen tremendous change over the past 10 decades, but our goal has remained steady: teach students to find truth and hold power to account.

Thousands of our graduates have gone on to become working journalists, and I had the opportunity to talk with three of them—John Branch (MJour’89), Jackie Fortiér (MJour’13) and Vignesh Ramachandran (Jour’11)—about topics ranging from what challenges they face as journalists to how they find joy in their jobs.

Of course, the unique strength of our new college is the synergy formed by all of our academic programs. Across the board, our faculty members are educating the next generation of communicators and exploring how they can have a positive impact on humanity. Be sure to check out Associate Professor Stephen Voida’s work on improving mental health therapy through technology, and the climate-focused projects taken on by faculty and students in Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design; Communication; Critical Media Practices; and Journalism.

As CMCI enters its seventh year and becomes more mature as a college, I can’t wait to see what the next century holds and what important stories, projects and research the faculty, students and alumni from all of our disciplines will pursue!

Please keep sending us your updates to feature in Alumni News and let us know if you’ll be on campus. I’d love to hear from you.

Lori Bergen, PhD
Founding Dean
College of Media, Communication and Information

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From undergraduates to doctoral candidates, the college equips students with the knowledge and skills needed to produce, gather, archive, curate, analyze and evaluate the flood of information, messages, data, images, sounds and ideas that populate our complex and rapidly evolving global media landscape.

Six-and-a-half years after arriving in Boulder, I’m constantly amazed by the creativity and enthusiasm of our students, the important work of our alumni and the critical research our faculty are undertaking. In this edition of CMCI Now, I’m delighted to share a few of those stories.

After moving from a village in Tanzania to the U.S. in 2012, Angel Mollel launched the foundation 1 Love to improve the livelihood of Maasai people and empower women and girls to pursue their dreams. Now a sophomore studying media production, she’s learning visual storytelling to help preserve her culture.

Communication alumna Carey Candrian is focusing on the stories not told as she reimagines how scripts used in medical intake conversations—scripts that tend to overlook the critical life experience of LGBTQ people—can be redesigned.

See Faculty Now for an overview of the research and creative works of our over 100 faculty members—from Professor Robin Burke’s study of recommender systems and other personalized information systems in e-commerce to Senior Instructor Jamie Skerski’s creation of a speaking lab that will offer students speech coaching and communication workshops.

As always, I’d love to hear from you. Send us an update to your story to share in Alumni News and let us know if you have an idea we should cover!

Lori Bergen, PhD
Founding Dean
College of Media, Communication and Information

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As we in CMCI prepare for another fall semester, I want to share some updates about our campus, as well as a few stories about our alumni, students and faculty. 

All of our students will be back in just a few short weeks, and the campus is doing so in a way that prioritizes the well-being of our entire community and our ability to continue delivering an excellent education. Although it will not be a completely typical semester, the majority of classes will be held in person and a number of events will return. Our campus leadership continues to work closely with local and state public health officials on COVID-19 related developments and will keep the campus and community updated.

I was thrilled that this summer we were able to bring our Pathways to Excellence students back on campus after holding the program virtually last year, as well as launching Connections: CMCI Summer Academy, which was delayed last summer due to the pandemic. The academy was created to support and host historically underserved sophomore and junior high school students—especially those who may not know if college is the right fit for them. You can read about their week-long experience in “Making Connections.”&�Բ�����;

As we pulled together “Sharing Stories of the Games,” we were reminded of the many alumni who have a long tradition of covering the Olympics, including AP photographer Gregory Bull (Jour’91), Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist John Branch (Bus’89; MJour’96) and USA Volleyball Communications Manager B.J. Hoeptner Evans (Jour’90). It was also fun to celebrate Olympic newcomers like NBC Sports Event Management Assistant Lina Takahashi (Jour’19), who has long dreamed of covering the Tokyo Games, and student Abbie Snyder, who attended the swimming trials as a production runner for NBC. Other veteran Olympic storytellers, such as CMCI Instructor and Sports Media Minor Director Marina Dmukhovskaya and producer and director Peter Lasser (Comm’76), shared updates about the unique challenges and benefits of this year’s virtual coverage.

If you’ve got a five-minute break and are looking for something fascinating to watch, I recommend our story and video feature on media production major Taylor Passios, who turned her apartment into an immersive exhibit to illuminate the role of online information overload in COVID-related hypochondria. And for some great summer reading, don’t miss our roundup of books recently published by CMCI faculty (including one I co-authored), and more!

I hope you enjoy this issue of CMCI Now and these stories of creativity, innovation and success that celebrate our alumni, faculty, staff and student accomplishments!

Warm regards,
Lori Bergen, PhD
Founding Dean
College of Media, Communication and Information

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I hope that during these trying times this email finds you well. As we prepare for the fall semester, I wanted to share some updates about our campus, as well as a few stories about the outstanding creative work and research our CMCI community continues to produce. 

Many of you have probably heard that in a few weeks students will return to campus for a mixture of in-person, remote and hybrid classes. We all know these aren’t typical times and this won’t be a typical semester. Our campus’ leadership team spent the summer consulting with epidemiologists and other health officials, facilities managers, professors and staff to ensure that, as we return to campus, we do it the right way––in a way that prioritizes safety, and our ability to continue delivering an excellent education. They have my confidence, and if you’d like to learn more about their plans, you can visit the Roadmap to Fall 2020 as well as the Protect Our Herd public health campaign. 

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot this summer––and I’ve spoken to CMCI professors who are thinking about this, too. Although the situation we’re in presents challenges, this is also an incredible time to be doing the work that we do. 

We’re experiencing an historic moment, and the lessons our students learn will position them to emerge as adaptable leaders when the world needs them most. So many of you have demonstrated this––as , as , as business leaders pivoting to meet the moment, as , and as . Thank you for this important work, and for showing our students what’s possible. 

It may be apropos that during this time of change we marked five years since the official launch of the College of Media, Communication and Information. When the college officially launched on July 1, 2015, it was created as a place to break out of the mold of traditional media schools and instead bring together entrepreneurial and innovative faculty and students from across disciplines to learn, create and analyze media and technology content in all its many forms. 

Shamika Goddard, who is earning her PhD in CMCI’s Department of Information Science with a focus on technology, social justice and spirituality, is one of the many CMCI students and faculty who exemplify these qualities. Read the story of how she launched the on June 19, 2020, a day to choose to commemorate both Juneteenth and her grandmother’s 71st birthday. “We use the best practices of pastoral care and chaplaincy to usher people through technological crises with dignity and grace,” she says.

Also in this issue, read about students reporting from the field on COVID in their communities and others creating 3D models for the CU Museum that can be integrated into virtual and augmented reality experiences, a Q&A with the faculty member creating a new online master’s in corporate communication and a roundup of news stories about our faculty.

I hope you and your family are safe and well,

Lori Bergen, PhD
Founding Dean
College of Media, Communication and Information

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As an activist and recent graduate from our Media and Public Engagement master’s program, Katy Fetters uses social media to reframe cerebral palsy.

Assistant Professor Jed Brubaker is making the internet a kinder place.

And alumna Savannah Sellers has a daily following of millions of teens who are showing that they do care about the news.

Fetters, Brubaker and Sellers come from different backgrounds. One graduated from media studies, one is an information scientist, and one is a journalist. Yet they are all using social media for social change. In terms of media, they’re thinking beyond what once was, embracing what now exists, and creating new possibilities for what could be.

I’m thinking about these and many other stories as we enter our fifth year as a college. We’ve created new departments and centers, hired faculty from across the country and developed new academic programs. These changes have set up an environment for our students, alumni, faculty and staff to be confident and creative in an evolving world, and we’re continuing to move forward.

Our new sports media minor is one of the best examples of how we’re building on the strong foundation of our legacy programs. It provides hands-on media training and gives students the flexibility to explore a number of sports-related topics, including business and economics, race and gender dynamics, health and wellness, fandom and rhetoric, and more. Read about our many alumni working in the field and what the minor means for students on Page 30.

As always, I’d love to hear from you.

Lori Bergen
Founding Dean, College of Media, Communication and Information

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