Amy Jordan, Ph.D., associate director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, has been awarded a top teaching honor from the National Communication Association. Dr. Jordan was presented with the 2013 NCA Mass Comm. Division Teaching Award, honoring her “dedication and commitment to excellence in teaching and mentoring,” at the NCA’s 99th annual convention in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 22.
“In every sense of the word, she is a true teacher,” Jessica Taylor Piotrowski, Ph.D., a former student and current faculty member at the University of Amsterdam, wrote in a nominating letter for Dr. Jordan, who also is an adjunct full professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I learned from her in the undergraduate classroom, and these lessons parlayed themselves into the career I have today. In graduate school, she taught me how to be a better researcher and teacher… This past June, I was awarded an excellence-in-teaching award from my department. When people congratulated me on the award, I simply said, ‘I learned from the best – I learned from Amy Jordan.’ ”
Another former student, Jeewon Sophia Choi, wrote: “Dr. Jordan drove me to push my intellectual limits and to do so with excitement and anticipation for what’s beyond them. I left Penn a better scholar and person because of her.”
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said, “Amy Jordan is a teacher whose dedication and wise counsel will be remembered by students for decades.” And Michael Delli Carpini, Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication said, “Amy is one of the best undergraduate teachers I have encountered in my 35 years as a scholar, teacher, and university administrator.”
Dr. Jordan said, “I’m honored to be this year’s recipient, and so pleased that the Mass Communication Division recognizes teaching as a professional activity that is critically important and deeply valued.”
Dr. Jordan, who teaches courses on media and childhood development, media policy, and media effects, was also honored this fall when she was elected President Elect-Select of the International Communication Association, the leading international organization devoted to scholarship in the field of communication. Dr. Jordan will assume the presidency of the ICA, which has 4,700 members in 86 countries, in 2015.
