COM adds faculty experts in screenwriting, kids’ TV, and public relations
Hires include former Sesame Street executive producer Michael Loman
The seven recent additions to the faculty at the College of Communication have come to BU from cultural hubs around the nation, including Los Angeles, Florida, and Sesame Street.
Among the four appointments in the department of film and television is Michael Loman, a visiting professor of television, who has been a writer and producer for some of the country’s best-loved television shows, including Happy Days, The Cosby Show, and Sesame Street, where he was an executive producer for 10 years. Over the course of his career, Loman has won 11 Emmy Awards, a Humanitas Prize, and citations from the NAACP Image Awards and La Raza Latino Bravo Awards. This semester he is teaching courses in sitcom writing, television production, and television and childhood.
“I was interested in working for a school that had a really great TV department, so that’s why BU worked out,” Loman says of his decision to teach at the University. “And the students here are interested in academic work as well as interested in the field, which is wonderful.”
Loman is joined in the film and TV department by Christopher Cavalieri, an assistant professor of television, who has lectured at COM for 15 years and has served as academic director of COM’s award-winning Institute for Television, Film, and Radio Production and as the faculty advisor for BUTV; Randy Steinberg, a visiting assistant professor of film, who has a master’s degree in screenwriting; and Scott Thompson, a visiting assistant professor of film, who directs the screenwriting certificate program at Emerson College.
The department of mass communication, advertising, and public relations has added two faculty members to its roster this semester: John Carroll, an assistant professor, and Bettye Grable, an associate professor. Carroll is a producer and panelist for Beat the Press, a weekly program on Boston’s WGBH-TV, and has won the Radio-Television News Directors Association’s Edward R. Murrow Award for writing, the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism, and multiple New England Emmys for commentary and news writing. Grable, who has a doctorate in mass communications from Louisiana State University, served as the first director of the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communication Minority Scholarship Program and as the community liaison officer for the city of Tallahassee, Fla.
In the journalism department, Frank Shorr, longtime executive director of the Boston University Sports Institute and an adjunct faculty member, has been named an assistant professor of journalism. Shorr was executive editor of sports for Boston television station WHDH, where he won eight Emmy Awards, and will continue to run the Sports Institute during the summer.
“For the third straight year, we are seeing a significant increase in the quality of our faculty,” says COM Dean John Schulz. “These are people whose backgrounds and attainments add to the quality and reputation of the college, nationally and internationally.”