SWECJMC Announces the 2024 winner of its Educator Award: Professor & Chair Mia Moody
The Southwest Education Council for Journalism and Mass Communication (SWECJMC) is pleased to announce the 2024 winner of its Educator Award—Dr. Mia Moody, professor and Chair of the Department of Journalism, Public Relations and New Media at Baylor University. The Educator Award, created in 2021, honors a faculty member at a SWECJMC member institution who has demonstrated an outstanding contribution to journalism and mass communication education and an exceptional commitment to undergraduate and graduate education through innovative practices, excellent student outcomes, and classroom-focused research. These attributes essentially describe Dr. Moody’s career.
Dr. Moody—who has four college degrees from Texas A&M, Baylor, and the University of Texas, respectively—has served on the faculty at Baylor University since 2001. She teaches various classes, including Reporting and Writing for Media, Public Relations Media Planning, Gender, Race and Media, and Theory of Mass Communication. In addition to chairing the department, she previously served as graduate program director.
She has authored/co-authored four books and four dozen articles in top journals, including Journalism Mass Communication Quarterly, Howard Journal of Communication, Journalism Educator, Journal of Black Studies, and Public Relations Review. Many of her studies examine media portrayals of race and how that intersects with society, primarily through stereotypes in social media.
As examples of her outstanding contribution to JMC education, she led her department to a successful reaccreditation, just oversaw the launch of a broadcast sequence, and the journalism, public relations, and new media department has a first-year student retention rate of over 90%. She has long been recognized as a role model and mentor to students and faculty. For 20 years, she has served as faculty adviser of Baylor’s chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, and her name is on a scholarship awarded to an NABJ member each year. She has chaired 15 master’s theses, participated in 18 additional thesis committees, and served on two doctoral dissertation committees.
She was head of the Minorities and Communication Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), was an officer for three years on the AEJMC Commission on the Status of Women, and is the current vice-president elect of AEJMC and will become president in 2026. She was previously honored as the 2021 Cornelia Marschall Smith Award: Professor of the Year at Baylor University; the 2019 Baylor University Newsmaker Award; the 2016 AEJMC Outstanding Woman in Journalism and Mass Communication Education by the Commission on the Status of Women, and the 2018 Lionel C. Barrow Jr. Award for Distinguished Achievement in Diversity Research and Education.
Dr. Moody won two AEJMC top paper honors at one conference just last year—the latest in many awards for her research on marginalized communities. She is equally deserving of this honor for her exemplary teaching and mentorship.
