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Participants
Special guests include (abbreviated list)
- Warren Bell, Jr.... is the Associate Vice President for University & Media Relations at Xavier University of Louisiana, where he oversees its communications, marketing & public relations efforts.
A native of New Orleans, Bell has been a well-established presence in local broadcast journalism and media for more than three decades as a news anchor and reporter, also as a talk show host and news manager, in addition to producing numerous documentaries. He became New Orleans' first African American weekday prime-time TV news anchor in 1977, and has covered nearly all of the city's milestone events over those years including local and statewide elections, hurricanes, presidential conventions, etc.
On the academic front, Bell spent seventeen years (1983-2000) teaching journalism courses as a Visiting Lecturer at Dillard University.
- Clifton Harris... is is a lifelong resident of New Orleans. He attended the University of New Orleans and Southeast Technical College. He is the Homeless Management Information Systems Coordinator for ViaLink in collaboration with UNITY of Greater New Orleans where he assists case managers and nonprofit organizations with providing services to the homeless in the city. He has been with Via Link for four years. He also works with the 211 Information and Referral line for disaster relief. When he isn't doing these things he enjoys writing, and spending time with his family. He has been writing his blog Cliff's Crib for four years. After Hurricane Katrina, he focused most of his writing towards social and community issues with a focus towards local problems.
- Dedra Johnson... grew up in New Orleans and is a fiction writer and professor. She began blogging under a pseudonym post-Katrina about local culture, politics and other frustrations. Her first novel, Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow, was published in 2007. She has earned degrees from Northwestern University, the University of Southern Mississippi, and the University of Florida-Gainesville. She teaches composition and creative writing at Dillard University where she is also Assistant Dean of Humanities.
- Eban Walters... born and raised on the Westbank of New Orleans, received his doctorate in child clinical psychology from Vanderbilt University, with sub-specialty training in developmental psychopathology (National Institutes of Health) and child and family public policy (Columbia University). Seeing an opportunity to contribute to a city he could never really escape anyway, he returned to New Orleans in August 2006 and was nudged into blogging after attending the first Rising Tide conference (2006) as a concerned, non-blogging citizen. By Rising Tide II, E.J. had clawed his way all the way to the top as a panelist blogger on the Making Civic Sexy Panel. In addition to day jobs, E.J. maintains his ties to the local blogging community as a vital link to staying up on and involved in important local issues.
- Jordan Flaherty... is director of the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival as well as a writer and community organizer based in New Orleans. He was the first journalist with a national audience to write about the Jena Six case, and played an important role in bringing the story to national attention. His post-Katrina writing in ColorLines Magazine shared a journalism award from New America Media for best Katrina-related coverage in the Ethnic press. Jordan is an editor of Left Turn Magazine and has written for a range of publications, from the Village Voice to Clarin in Argentina and Germany's Die Zeit. He has been published in several anthologies, including the South End Press books Live From Palestine and What Lies Beneath: Race, Katrina and the State of the Nation, and the upcoming AK Press book Red State Rebels. He has appeared as a guest on a wide range of television and radio shows, including CNN Morning, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, Democracy Now, Radio Nation on Air America, News and Notes on NPR, and many other outlets. He has also produced news segments for Al Jazeera and TeleSur.
- Paul Beaulieu... is a media professional with over 35 years in print, television and radio media. Beaulieu has worked in television as a producer, writer and host. In radio, Beaulieu presently works as host of "Showtime in the Afternoon" at WBOK, 1230 AM. Beaulieu is also a Press Club Award winner for political column writing.
- Michael Homan... is an Associate Professor of Theology at Xavier University of Louisiana. He is the author of more than 50 articles and three books, including The Bible for Dummies. With the help of Bart Everson from Xavier's Center for the Advancement of Teaching, Dr. Homan has used a variety of new technologies in the classroom, including student movies and blogging. Students in his Intro to Biblical Studies course have been blogging since 2003. They post weekly about a variety of topics, most notably about a project they design and implement to improve the world. He also uses his personal blog as a resource to discuss Biblical Studies as well as his personal experiences regarding the rebuilding of New Orleans.
- Marion Carroll... comes full circle to New Orleans leaving 11 years with Wyeth-Ayerst Medical Research Division in Pearl River NY to return to Xavier University of Louisiana in 1996 as a research assistant in the lab of Dr. Tuajuanda Jordan in the Department of Chemistry. This tenure was short as he joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at LSU Health Sciences Center in 1997 to earn his Ph.D. In 2001 he returned to Xavier and to the Department of Chemistry where he teaches biochemistry, organic chemistry, genomics and proteomics. He conducts basic research with undergraduates in the application of microfluidics to analyze and understand the structure and function of unique mobile DNA elements in primates and also serves as Co-director and facilitator of undergraduate recruitment and retention within the Department of Chemistry and through the University Admission's Committee and the HBCU-UP program.
As a Xavier University graduate (Class of 1983), a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the Across Curriculum Thinking faculty and most recently part of the Freshman Studies Program Dr. Carroll has found it vital to experience not only cutting edge science but to be active in the discipline and development of a student's understanding of the college life and life in general. This has involved active participation in community outreach activities within the Fraternity, outreach in the K-12 public education environment and as his Homeowner's Association president, engaging his neighborhood community in improving relationships.
Each of these activities he has found in some way an outlet within the "Blog-o-Sphere". Documenting, memorializing and archiving activities that have far reaching consequences are some of the many advantages to online communities. The assortment of voices and images create a collective intelligence that can seed ideas and imaginations that have the potential to aggregate into that artificial intelligence that some fear and others invite. It is an exciting time.
- Ross Louis.... (Ph.D. Louisiana State University, 2002) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communications at Xavier University of Louisiana. He teaches courses in performance studies (The Theatre, Performance of Literature) and communication studies. He also teaches the Freshman Seminar series as well as Fundamentals of Public Speaking (Honors) in which he incorporates service-learning and new technologies such as blogging. Currently, he is editor of XULAneXUS, Associate Director of the Center for Undergraduate Research, and Faculty In Residence for the Center for Student Leadership & Service as well as the Center for the Advancement of Teaching.
Dr. Louis joined the Speech Communication program at Xavier in 2003. He initiated and coordinates a service-learning program at Xavier entitled, "Communicating Common Ground," which partners with the National Communication Association and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Dr. Louis' research uses a performance studies approach to study: the politics of education and pedagogy; cultural identity and practices; and community activism.
- Student Panel Participants:
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