Christopher Harper Receives Fulbright Teaching Fellowship

Christopher Harper, professor of television-radio and the College’s first Roy H. Park Distinguished Chair in Communications, has been awarded a Fulbright fellowship. He will spend the spring term at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, where he will teach courses about American media systems and practices.

"I have had the opportunity in the past three years to travel to Japan and Israel to see the development of digital technology," Harper says. "The Fulbright fellowship will enable me to look at digital technology in Poland. There has been a great deal of innovation going on in Eastern Europe in the past decade. Given the Polish bent toward art, music, and other cultural forms, it should be interesting to see how the country has adapted those traditions into new media. I think my students can benefit from these insights into how other countries use the World Wide Web and other digital technologies."

At Ithaca Harper teaches a number of courses, including Introduction to the Mass Media, Public Affairs Reporting, Computer-Assisted Reporting, Television Journalism, and New Telecommunications Technologies. Before coming to Ithaca in 1997, Harper was an associate professor of journalism at New York University. His latest book, The New Mass Media, is scheduled for publication in May 2001. The book, which traces the impact of the Internet on the media, advertising, journalism, and public relations, is Harper’s fourth since he joined the Ithaca College faculty. The others are And That’s the Way It Will Be: News and Information in a Digital World, Journalism 2001, and What’s Next in Mass Communications.

A veteran journalist with extensive broadcast and print credentials, Harper served as a producer for the ABC News program 20/20 from 1986 to 1995. He was responsible for investigative pieces on topics ranging from Middle East terrorism to airline and prescription drug safety to the means used to produce the bomb at the federal building in Oklahoma City. He was previously an ABC bureau chief (1983–86) and correspondent (1981–83) in Rome, and bureau chief in Cairo (1981). Under Harper’s direction, ABC productions were nominated for several Emmy Awards; these included coverage of the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise liner and a documentary on the deaths of civilians in Palestinian refugee camps. Previously, Harper served as the Beirut bureau chief for Newsweek. He was also a Newsweek correspondent in Washington and Chicago, where he began his career as a reporter for the Associated Press.

Harper graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree in English literature and journalism from the University of Nebraska; he earned a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University.

The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. Funded primarily by the U.S. State Department, the program awards grants to citizens of participating countries for university teaching, advanced research, graduate study, and teaching in elementary and secondary schools.