UNM Journalism Professor Mike Marcotte is one of 17 instructors nationwide to be selected by the Tow-Knight Center of Entrepreneurial Journalism into a fellowship in which each recipient is designated a “Disruptive Journalism Educator” who is tasked with championing a specific aspect of journalism education.
"How does a lone instructor lead 20 journalism students through four-cycles of story planning and execution to produce a portfolio of published work? It takes a system—and a lot of collaboration. That’s what I hope to share through this fellowship,” said Marcotte.
Tow-Knight Fellowship focuses on recognizing effective experimentation from the best successful practices for teaching classes in smaller blocks, or teaching digital skills in short workshops.
"My teaching challenge has been building courses that feed our publishing enterprise, inside the curriculum,” said Marcotte. “The NM News Port now has published hundreds of students since its start. For most students, this is their first experience in publishing professional quality work."
Marcotte is a public media news veteran and a 2011 Stanford Knight Fellow now serving as the first professor of practice in journalism at UNM. He teaches advanced multimedia journalism, intermediate reporting and has created courses in media entrepreneurship and criminal justice issues at the University. He also consults for Democracy Fund and PRNDI.
In Marcotte’s almost four-years at UNM, he won an ONA Challenge Fund for Innovation in Education, he launched the award-winning NM News Port lab and has grown partnerships with public radio, TV and other professionals. Currently his program is host to an AAJA/IRE collaborative reporting project.
Ultimately, the professor would like to get national reaction to this model and “Share the model with others—especially instructors in smaller programs like ours."