1999 Walter Barnard Hill Awards for Distinguished Achievement in University Public Service & Outreach

Melinda D. Hawley

Melinda D. Hawley’s contributions to the improvement of the quality of life through public service and outreach programs and special projects have had an exceptional impact on a diverse public, the College of Journalism and Mass Communication, The University of Georgia, and the newspaper industry.

With the support of the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach and colleague Donna Q. Butler of the College of Education, Hawley created the nation’s first refereed, interdisciplinary academic journal dedicated to public service and outreach, the Journal of Public Service and Outreach.

She developed a service-learning publishing program that produces high qulity annual magazines that highlight the impact of service programs at The University of Georgia. The magazine Impact, funded by the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach, is distributed each January to about 4,000 recipients. In the fall of 1996, 16 journalism undergraduate students applied their skills in writing and publication design to produce Catalyst, a 48-page University System of Georgia magazine covering economic development outreach work at the state’s 34 colleges and universities. Ten thousand copies were printed and distributed in January 1997.

As a result of the high visibility of the service-learning magazine program, Hawley’s spring 1999 students will write articles for a magazine highlighting innovative service-learning projects across the state. Hawley, who conceived of the project, will supervise the publication of the magazine, which is funded by the state Department of Education’s Learn and Serve Georgia, a division of the national service-learning program.

Hawley has developed educational programs in which journalism students teach their younger peers how to gather and write news. These programs have enhanced college students’ understanding of coursework and their acquisition of skills and have augmented their college experience by involving them in hands-on public service work. The first Management Seminar for College Newspaper Editor was held in August 1996 for 40 newly named editors from across the country. In its third year, 15 advisers joined 50 students for an expanded four-and-a-half-day seminar. Faculty for the annual seminar are distinguished journalists from top newspapers and newspaper groups across the region.

Hawley launched the Media Literacy Program (MLP) in the fall of 1996 in conjunction with a project conducted to collaborate, MLP provided instruction by community experts one afternoon per week in the “Step Ahead for Excellence” program. Grady journalism students soon were teaching fourth-grade students how to produce their first newspaper, The Alps Enterprise.

Hawley’s impact has been substantial in her area of specialization, women’s readership of newspapers. She served as a consultant in August 1998 for the Los Angeles Times, providing an assessment of how well this major daily paper was meeting the needs of women readers. Previous consulting work to assess the ability of women’s pages to attract and retain women readers was sought by The Atlanta Journal/Constitution in November 1995 and by The Arizona Republic in spring 1996.