Jeanne Rollberg was born in Jacksonville and grew up in Green Cove Springs, Florida, before leaving the state to attend college at Wesleyan. She intended to prepare for law school. While a student Wesleyan, she enjoyed the sisterhood and friendly class competition traditions, like STUNT, and made wonderful friendships. Jeanne especially remembers a January intersession term experience during which a professor took students on a study tour of England. In 1979, she graduated with a degree in history and then changed course from law to a career in journalism. She narrowed her focus to journalism education while pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1980.
“Wesleyan enhanced my curiosity and love of education, and it also built leadership skills,” remembers Rollberg. “”Whether in my work as a television or radio reporter or in being department chair/professor at a university, I have long relied on the self-sufficiency, hard work, and leadership skills that Wesleyan tried to instill in us.”
Today, Jeanne Rollberg is an associate professor of journalism in the School of Mass Communication at University of Arkansas at Little Rock where she has taught since 1983. She formerly was interim director of the School of Mass Communication that was established at UALR in 2000 and before that, she was chair of the Department of Journalism from 1995-2000. In 2005, Jeanne was named the outstanding journalism educator of the year in the state by the Arkansas Press Association From 1981 to 1983, she was an instructor at Texas A&M and was news director of KAMU-TV/FM in College Station. After moving to UALR in 1983, she also was a part-time reporter at KTHV-TV in Little Rock from 1984-1989, and she spent 10 years doing news and public affairs programming on KLRE/KUAR-FM for which she won many national and statewide awards. She wrote feature stories for the Dayton Daily News in Dayton, Ohio in 1981.
Through the years, she has served as president, vice president, secretary, and a board member of the Arkansas Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. She served on the board of directors of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the largest organization of electronic journalists in the world, for two terms, in 2001 and 2002. She was head of the Radio-TV Journalism Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), the nation's largest organization of educators in mass communication.
In 2002, Jeanne received the UALR College of Professional Studies award for public service, one of three awards presented to faculty members in the college annually. She provided communication, public relations and focus group services while on sabbatical at the Clinton School of Public Service in spring 2005 with an area of concentration on minority and female student recruiting.
Jeanne credits Wesleyan with increasing her confidence and affirming that women can make contributions in many areas -- both professional and non-professional. She says, “Wesleyan’s personal attention and small class size encouraged me to excel partly because it was impossible to hide!”
Wesleyan College emphasized the idea that she should bring intelligence and passion to every undertaking, and she claims that philosophy has helped her to succeed professionally. As an associate professor of journalism in the School of Mass Communication at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, she is sharing that gift with her students today. |
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Jeanne Rollberg '79
Associate Professor of Journalism
University of Arkansas at Little Rock |
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