Three news items for JEA mentors, mentees and alums of the program.
1) Peggy Gregory named co-chair of Mentoring Committee
JEA President Mark Newton has announced that Peggy Gregory is the new co-chair of the Mentoring Committee. She will serve in that role with Linda Barrington. Julie Dodd, who served as co-chair of the committee for six years, asked to step out of that role. She will continue to serve on the Mentoring Committee.
2) Mentoring Committee launches webinars
The Mentoring Committee will be holding webinars during the 2013-2014 school year to provide training and group interaction for mentors, nentees and others interested in journalism education.
Major cuts to the JEA Mentoring budget were made for the 2013-2014 budget. Those cuts mean that the mentors will not be meeting at the Boston JEA/NSPA Convention. For the first six years of the program, the Mentoring Committee held mentoring activities at both the fall and spring conventions, and mentors could choose to attend one convention. Due to the budget cuts, the mentoring activities will be held only at the spring convention in San Diego in April 2014.
To help fill the gap of not having a fall training, the Mentoring Committee will be hosting webinars. The first webinar was held on July 10 — “Prepare and Present a Webinar.” We’ve set up a Webinars page on the blog. Click on the Webinars tab at the top of the page, or you can click this link — Prepare and Present a Webinar — to watch the first webinar. Mentors will be notified about upcoming webinars.
3) Mentoring Program will assist with JEA’s new curriculum project
As part of the 2013-2014 JEA budget, a new curriculum initiative was established. In working with Mark Newton and JEA Executive Director Kelly Furnas on budget planning, the Mentoring Program allocated more than $20,000 from accumulated savings from the program to help fund the new curriculum program. Newton and Furnas said the mentors and mentees will play an important role with the new curriculum project. The 14 curriculum developers have recently been named.