Alumna Serves as Foreign Correspondent for UA News Web Site

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Emily Smith, a 2003 journalism alumna of The University of Alabama, will serve as correspondent for Dateline Alabama while working on a master’s degree in Caracas, Venezuela, this year.

An experienced correspondent, Smith, from Hoover, has also worked as a Tuscaloosa reporter for The Birmingham News and for the Crimson White, UA’s student newspaper.

Throughout her undergraduate years, Smith served as international correspondent for Dateline Alabama, the news Web site of UA’s College of Communication and Information Sciences, submitting articles and pictures from India, Colombia, Spain and other nations during eight travel and study abroad experiences. Dateline Alabama is accessible at http://www.datelinealabama.com/.

“What an asset Emily Smith has been to this campus,” said Dr. Edward Mullins, professor and chairperson of the UA journalism department. “She is one of the best-traveled and most able young foreign correspondents I know.

“In India, in June 2002, at some danger to herself, she reported on hostilities between Muslims and Hindus, where war has occurred over two centuries.” A Muslim mob burned a train loaded with Hindu pilgrims in Godhra, northern Gujarat. Hindus retaliated, leaving 1,000 people dead in three months. Smith described conditions as people tried to put their lives back together in their neighborhoods and marketplaces.

“For all of her assignments, she learns to speak the language of the people on whom she is reporting.”

She has reported for Dateline from South America, Europe and Asia, Mullins said, “always with accuracy and sensitivity.” Several Alabama newspapers have picked up her reports, including The Birmingham News, The Tuscaloosa News and The Anniston Star.

Smith was the first woman and first American to serve as president of UA’s International Student Association. She served as vice president of both Rotaract Club and of the Honors Program Student Association and was elected to numerous honor societies.

She graduated with a 4.0 grade point average in June and received the journalism department’s Outstanding Senior Academic Award.

The Tuscaloosa Rotary Club nominated Smith for a full Rotary International Scholarship to serve as an Academic Year Ambassadorial Scholar for 2003-2004. She will spend the year studying at la Universidad Central de Venezuela and speaking at Rotary clubs in Caracas.

The College of Communication and Information Sciences is among the largest and most prestigious communication colleges in the nation. Graduating more than 12,000 students, C&IS is consistently ranked among the top 10 in number of doctoral degrees awarded and in many of its research programs. C&IS graduates have won four of the six Pulitzer Prizes awarded to University of Alabama alumni, and the forensics and debate squad, housed within the College, has garnered 14 national championships.