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Posted 8-23-01
CLEVELAND -- A gift from alumna Susie Gharib, the co-anchor of the PBS "Nightly Business Report," will help bring eminent journalists to the Case Western Reserve University campus. The new lecturers will speak to audiences and classes at CWRU on the state of the media as part of the new Susie Gharib Distinguished Lectureship in Journalism in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Arrangements are in progress to bring an editor of a major American newspaper, well-known investigative and business reporters, and a best-selling author to CWRU during the upcoming academic year.
"This lecture series becomes the crown jewel in CWRU's journalism program," says Ted Gup. He is CWRU's Shirley Wormser Professor of Journalism and Media Writing and a former investigative reporter for the Washington Post and Time magazine.
The Gharib Lectures series enables CWRU to expand its popular journalism offerings into the areas of business reporting, sports writing, ethics in journalism, investigative reporting, feature writing, cultural affairs reporting, and political reporting through the journalists' visits.
Gharib, an award-winning veteran journalist, graduated magna cum laude in 1972 from Flora Stone Mather College and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at graduation.
Her career started at the Plain Dealer and continued at Newsweek, where she worked while attending Columbia University to pursue her master of international affairs degree. As a print journalist, she also reported for the Associated Press and Fortune magazine.
She entered broadcasting in 1983 as an anchor and correspondent for ESPN's "Business Times." Before becoming the co-anchor of "Nightly Business Report" in 1998, she anchored CNBC's "Today's Business" and "Market Watch."
The Gharib lecturers will form the cornerstone of a new advanced journalism class. "It will be dazzling in terms of the exposure that CWRU students will have to these first-rate minds in the field. It's a real plus for the students," says Gup.
Gup will invite four or five speakers a semester -- usually during the spring semester, to have the class dovetail with an introductory journalism course offered in the fall. Scheduled to begin in spring 2002, the series will bring speakers to campus for one- to three-day residencies. While the course is considered an advanced journalism class, there are no pre-requisites.
The University will explore additional opportunities for the journalists to meet with area media and to speak at public forums.
Gup will draw upon his contacts in the media world. He is the award-winning author of the Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified Deaths at the CIA, in which he employed his investigative reporting skills to uncover the identities of the Central Intelligence Agency's unnamed fallen agents.
He has also written for a range of publications, such as National Geographic, Newsweek, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Los Angeles Times, and the Columbia Journalism Review.
Gup joined the CWRU faculty in 1999 to teach journalism in CWRU's Department of English. Since his arrival, he has built the journalism offerings to three courses and an internship experience.
During the 2001-02 academic year, the course offerings will increase to five as the University established two adjunct positions for working journalists, in addition to the Gharib Lectures.
Steven Litt, the art and architecture critic at the Plain Dealer, will become the first visiting adjunct lecturer, teaching a new class this fall on reporting the arts. Litt has been a popular speaker on campus during a Friday Public Affairs lunch discussion, and as the 2001 guest speaker for the Campen Lecture on Architecture, during which he talked about the work of architect Frank Gehry.
Prior to joining the Plain Dealer in 1991, Litt reported on the arts and architecture for the News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a contributing editor to Architecture magazine and has had articles appear in Progressive Architecture, Travel & Leisure, and ARTnews.