School of Journalism and Electronic Media Professor Rob Heller has been selected as the fourth recipient of the CCI Board of Visitors Professorship. 

The BOV Professorship, currently held by Suzie Allard, Chancellor’s Professor in Information Sciences and CCI Associate Dean for Research, was made possible by generous gifts from donors including current and emeritus members of the college’s Board of Visitors. The three-year rotating professorship was established to recognize and reward outstanding CCI faculty members whose research, creative activity, teaching, and academic and professional service have uniquely contributed to the mission of their school, the college and the university.

In what has become a tradition every four years, journalism and electronic media students in Professor Rob Heller’s Media Graphics class (JEM 380) created billboard designs to encourage voter participation in the presidential election.

Heller’s class partnered with Lamar Advertising, which ran student billboard advertisements prior to the 2016 presidential election. This year, Lamar Advertising cycled through four student designs on an electronic billboard in Memphis.

The idea for this project began in 2012 when the class worked with the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy to post 12 designs around campus.

Each spring, professor Rob Heller from UT’s School of Journalism and Electronic Media in the College of Communication and Information takes his advanced photojournalism students to LaFollette, Tennessee, to find and photograph stories in the Campbell County community of 7,000, about 45 miles north of Knoxville.

It’s a ritual that has been reaping rewards for Heller, his students, and the public for more than a quarter of a century. Spring 2020 will mark the 27th anniversary of Eyes on LaFollette.