UA Journalism Professor Receives Krieghbaum Under-40 Award

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Kim Bissell, Southern Progress Corporation Endowed Professor in Magazine Journalism in The University of Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences, has been selected for the 2009 Krieghbaum Under-40 Award.

The award is given by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, for outstanding early career accomplishments and to honor individuals who have shown outstanding achievement and effort in teaching, research and public service. This award, considered one of the highest from AEJMC, honors the late Hillier Krieghbaum, former AEJMC president, and it has been in existence since 1980.

Bissell serves as the sequence coordinator for undergraduate students in visual journalism. She has received the College’s Board of Visitors Teaching Excellence Award and the Kappa Tau Alpha Commitment to Teaching Award. She has also won several awards for research from AEJMC.

Bissell teaches undergraduate courses in magazine design, magazine production and photojournalism and graduate courses in research methods, mass communication theory, health communication and media effects. She recently taught a magazine production class that traveled to France and produced a multimedia magazine, Alpine Living.

Her research examines the social effects of mass media as it relates to body image distortion in women and adolescent girls and further examines the role of media and cognition in the development of negative attitudes about weight stigmatization

After earning a bachelor’s degree in magazine journalism at the University of Florida in 1991, she obtained a master’s degree in social science from Binghamton University in 1996 and a doctorate in mass communication from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University in 1999.

Bissell will be presented the Krieghbaum Under-40 Award at the AEJMC annual convention in Boston Aug. 7.