Faculty

Ph.D., mass media, Michigan State University; M.S., journalism, Ohio University; B.S., journalism, Ohio University.

Dr. Bradshaw teaches broadcast journalism and media diversity classes. For 15 years, she was a reporter, anchor, and talk show host in Denver and Kansas City. Her work was honored with awards from the Colorado Association of Broadcasters, the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Associated Press, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Kansas City Press Club, and the Missouri Broadcasters Association. She heads the Jessie Courrier chapter of Kappa Tau Alpha.

Her research interests include the history of public opinion, media diversity, and media performance, and it has appeared in Journalism History, the Newspaper Research Journal, and the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. She served as an officer in the Radio and Television Journalism Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA).  Dr Bradshaw represented AJHA on the Accrediting Council in Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC). It is responsible for evaluating journalism and mass communication (JMC) programs at universities, and it makes all final accrediting decisions for all accredited JMC programs.

Dr. Bradshaw is on the editorial board of Electronic News and Journalism Educator, and she is a corresponding editor for Journalism History. She enjoys traveling, cooking, and bird watching.

Ph.D., mass media, Michigan State University; M.A., journalism, Michigan State University; B.A., Russian studies, University of Virginia.

Dr. Cassara's teaching areas include journalism history, global news, environmental journalism, and multiplatform news reporting, writing, and editing. She has worked as a reporter at The Lewiston Sun (ME), The Journal Tribune (Biddeford, ME) and The Pictorial (Old Saybrook, CT). In 1996 she worked as summer replacement assistant city editor and writing coach for the Bucks County Courier-Times as part of an American Society of Newspaper Editors Knight Fellowship. She has attended workshops at the Poynter Institute (St. Petersburg, FL) on teaching digital journalism, backpack journalism, and adapting teaching to the new media environments. Dr. Cassara also attended a journalism educator workshop at the NEWSPLEX at the University of South Carolina which also focused on using new media technologies for teaching. She has been a top five finalist for the BGSU Master Teacher Award.

Every other year Dr. Cassara helps organize a trip for BGSU students to France for a week-long international media workshop in Paris. Additionally, she has directed grant programs funded by the US Department of State that supported BGSU student’ involvement in an environmental journalism program with students from North Africa. BGSU students traveled for workshops in Tunisia; North African students came to BGSU for a workshop.

Her research has focuses on global news coverage in US media--both past and present; and now on has a particular interest in news coverage of the Middle East. She enjoys travel, classical music, reading mysteries, hiking and spending time with her dogs, Nala and Tasha.

Ph.D., mass communication, Ohio University; M.S., journalism, Ohio University; B.A., speech communication, Youngstown State University.

Dr. Foust’s teaching areas include broadcast journalism, journalism law and ethics and online journalism. He worked as a news videographer and editor at WYTV-TV in Youngstown, Ohio, where he also produced special projects. His background also includes video production and multimedia design. During the summer of 2000, he worked at WXYZ-TV in Detroit as part of a National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) faculty development grant. In September and October of 2014, he spent three weeks in San Francisco with KQED’s multimedia journalists.

His research interests include electronic media history, technology of mass communication and communication law. He has written a book, Big Voices of the Air: The Battle Over Clear Channel Radio, based on his dissertation research. He also wrote Online Journalism: Principles and Practices of News for the Web, a leading online journalism textbook, and is co-author of a video production textbook. 

In his spare time, he enjoys cars, computers, woodworking and word puzzles. He has taught at BGSU since 1994.

B.A., Broadcast Journalism, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; M.A., Counseling of Psychology, Alaska Pacific University.

Ken teaches the Video Editing course in Journalism and Public Relations. He also works as the advisor for BG24 News, the semi-weekly, live, half-hour student produced newscast.

In 15 years of teaching, Ken has taught courses in broadcast management, broadcast writing, news reporting, sports reporting and field and studio production. He was a news and sports anchor and reporter for stations in five different markets during an 18-year career in the television industry. He helped write and produce a documentary that was nominated for an Emmy award. Ken also spends summers doing baseball play-by-play in the Alaska Baseball League. He has won regional awards for his play-by-play broadcasts. Ken is involved with the National Press Photographer’s Association and the Radio and Television Digital News Association.

B.A., broadcast journalism, Bowling Green State University; M.A., mass communication, Bowling Green State University

Over the last 10 years, Mrs. Hagenbuch has worked in various aspects of the communications field including the governmental, advertising and healthcare industries. Most recently, she was senior communications specialist at the Fortune 500 building manufacturer Owens Corning, where she oversaw their global publication for over 20,000 employees as well as speech writing for the CEO.

Ph.D., sociology, Bowling Green State University; M.A., mass communication, Bowling Green State University; B.S., journalism, Bowling Green State University

Dr.  Terry L. Rentner, a professor in Journalism and Public Relations at BGSU since 1987, where she teaches public relations and journalism courses at the undergraduate level and pedagogy and health communications at the graduate level.  She has twice been a top five finalist for the BGSU Master Teacher Award and served for 20 years as advisor to the Public Relations Student Society of America. She is co-founder of the Richard Maxwell project, created to foster student participation in sport media and communication activities and events.  She is instrumental is launching the NFL Journalism and Communication Boot Camp, a three day workshop that teaches current and former NFL players about column writing, reporting, and radio commentary.

Dr. Rentner is a health communication scholar and developer of social norms research and programming efforts at the university.  Her work as a principal or co-investigator in college student health has led to over 20 state and federal grants totaling approximately $1.5 million.  Her primary research focuses on alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drug misuse, while her secondary research explores issue in public relations teaching.  She has received several state and national awards for her health communication campaigns, including one from the U.S. Department of Education that named the university’s peer-focused alcohol program as one of eight top programs in the country. She has published 15 refereed journal articles and book chapters and has presented close to 50 conference papers. Her most recent publication can be found in the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives.  She has also served as chair of the Journalism and Public Relations program and most recently as the Director of the School of Media and Communication at BGSU.

M.A., education and counseling, Bowling Green State University, B.S., communications education, Bowling Green State University.

Kelly Taylor teaches design and advising school publications as well as writing and reporting. She joined the program full time in August 1998 after teaching high school journalism and advising award winning high school publications for nearly 10 years. Taylor has been nominated twice for the Distinguished Instructor Award in the College of Arts and Sciences at BGSU. In 2007 she was inducted into the Great Lakes Interscholastic Press Association Hall of Fame.

Active in scholastic press, Taylor is a charter member of the Ohio Scholastic Media Association board, serving as secretary from 2007-2011. She is a member of the Journalism Education Association and holds a valid Ohio teaching license. She teaches high school yearbook, newspaper and adviser workshops in the region and judges publication writing and design contests.

Taylor and her husband, Tom, are Falcon Flames and have two children. She enjoys photography, scrapbooking and working on various volunteer design projects.

Ph.D. mass communication studies, University of Iowa; M.A., American history, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; B.A. history, Cornell University.

After careers in daily newspaper journalism and public relations in his native New England, Dr. Bissland joined the journalism faculty in 1976 and retired in 1997. He taught journalism, primarily public relations methods but also feature writing, and he also taught a university core course called “Great Ideas.” At various times he served as head of the Public Relations Sequence, chair of Journalism, graduate advisor in Mass Communication, and acting director of the School of Mass Communication.

His doctoral work was primarily in sociology, emphasizing the effects of structure on the behavior of news organizations. At BGSU, he presented research papers and wrote articles on job satisfaction and other aspects of communication work, as well as public perceptions of mental illness. His survey research methodologies included Q-factor analysis, a valuable but under-utilized approach to identifying opinion groups within populations.

After retiring he ran a small book publishing company and authored or co-authored three books on regional culture and history, most recently Blood, Tears, and Glory: How Ohioans Won the Civil War.

Ph.D., Social Science, Open University (U.K.); B.A., sociology, Exeter University (U.K.).

Dr. Oliver Boyd-Barrett joined the School of Communication Studies as Director in 2005, a position he held for three years before deciding to return to faculty in journalism, and has since retired in 2012.

His research interests include international and national news agencies, news media and the “war on terror,” and Hollywood representations of the intelligence community. He was previously Professor of Communication at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, California, and has held various appointments at universities in the United Kingdom.

Dr. Boyd-Barrett has published extensively on educational and management communications, international news media, and the political economy of mass communication. He is founding chair of the division for Global Communication and Social Change in the International Communication Association.

Ph.D., journalism and mass communication, University of Texas at Austin; M.S., agriculture journalism, University of Wisconsin-Madison; B.S., journalism and sociology, Iowa State University.

Dr. Nancy Brendlinger, a professor at BGSU since 1990, retired in 2016. Dr. Brendlinger taught reporting, feature and magazine writing, diversity issues in the media, international journalism and journalism in the movies, as well as courses in the international studies program.

She was a reporter, photographer, farm editor and area news editor for the Muscatine Journal (IA) and wrote and edited three newsletters at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has worked for Peace Corps (Chad and Senegal) and USAID (Indonesia and Croatia), was a Fulbright Scholar in Indonesia and Slovakia, and was a BGSU exchange teacher in China. Presently, she participates in an environmental communication/cultural exchange project with schools in Tunisia and Algeria and she now serves on the international studies program advisory board and the peace and conflict minor advisory board. She enjoys movies and travel.

M.A., public relations, Ohio State University, 1966; B.S., photojournalism, Bowling Green State University, 1956.

Jim Gordon passed away in February 2015. He retired in 1991 after 25 years as head of the Photojournalism Sequence, preceded by seven years as director of BGSU’s News and Photo Service, and adviser to the KEY yearbook from 1959 to 1981.

After graduation, he worked at The Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, OH), and The Star (Columbus), and was a staff photographer at The Blade (Toledo), for seven summers. During the Korean War, he was a Photographer’s Mate in the U.S. Navy Seabees. From 1978 to 2003, Gordon edited News Photographer magazine for the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA).

In 1971, he ran for mayor of Bowling Green as an Independent with Democratic support, coming in second in a three-person race.

You can read Jim's obituary from the NPPA here.

Ray Laakaniemi taught at BGSU from 1978 'til his retirement in 2000. At the moment, he is spending summers at 1170 Hidden Creek Blvd, in Mayer, Mn 55360 and the winter of 2011-12 at the Bentsen Grove Resort in Mission, Tx. 78572. His email is Rlaakan@bgsu.edu and he'd love to hear from you.

His interests continue to focus on weekly newspapers, with details on his book at weeklywritershandbook.com. Travel continues to be a major interest, with recent trips to British Columbia, Maine, the Everglades, the last two Albuquerque Balloon Festivals, the Four Corners, Big Bend, and Crete. He has visited all 50 states and 35 countries, including Japan on sabbatical, Estonia and the Scandinavian countries on Fulbright and Australia and New Zealand. Some of his photos are at http://gallery.pasty.com/index.php?cat=10336.

Ray's family includes his wife Karen, a retired Certified Nurse Midwife, and son Brian, MD, an ER physician.