Kudos Week of May 14, 2007

In addition to winning the Nafziger-White Dissertation Award, given by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication for the best dissertation earned in 2005-06 in the field of journalism and mass communication, Dave Cuillier also will pick up two more awards at AEJMC's annual convention in Washington, D.C., Aug. 9-12. Cuillier will receive the top faculty paper award in media law. His paper, also regarding public attitudes toward freedom of information, was selected from nearly 100 manuscripts judged by media law scholars. In teaching, Cuillier was named a Great Ideas for Teaching scholar, and will present his teaching exercise at the conference. His teaching idea describes how professors can use interactive slide-show scenarios to teach journalists the laws and ethical considerations in accessing public records. His idea was one of 25 selected for presentation at the conference, out of 60 submitted for consideration.

Alan Weisman's book The World Without Us, to be published in July, received the following review from Publisher's Weekly:

"If a virulent virus -- or even the Rapture -- depopulated Earth overnight, how long before all trace of humankind vanished? That's the provocative, and occasionally puckish, question posed by Weisman (An Echo in My Blood) in this imaginative hybrid of solid science reporting and morbid speculation.

"Days after our disappearance, pumps keeping Manhattan's subways dry would fail, tunnels would flood, soil under streets would sluice away and the foundations of towering skyscrapers built to last for centuries would start to crumble. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, anything made of bronze might survive in recognizable form for millions of years -- along with one billion pounds of degraded but almost indestructible plastics manufactured since the mid-20th century.

"Meanwhile, land freed from mankind's environmentally poisonous footprint would quickly reconstitute itself, as in Chernobyl, where animal life has returned after 1986's deadly radiation leak, and in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, a refuge since 1953 for the almost-extinct goral mountain goat and Amur leopard.

"From a patch of primeval forest in Poland to monumental underground villages in Turkey, Weisman's enthralling tour of the world of tomorrow explores what little will remain of ancient times while anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like."

Student Kudos