Norm Lewis to Retire from UFCJC in May 2025
Norm Lewis, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) Journalism associate professor, will retire at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year after 17 years at the College.
Lewis, who was named UF Teacher of the Year in 2010, collaborated with UFCJC Journalism Professor Mindy McAdams to create one of the largest undergraduate data journalism programs in U.S. higher education.
“What Norm has built in terms of our data journalism program will go down as one of the most significant milestones in the history of our program,” said Journalism Department Chair Ted Spiker. “We will miss him tremendously—not just for what he teaches, but for how he teaches. With care, with patience, with high standards, with accessibility, with a sneak-up-on-you sense of humor, and with a deep care and love for students and for journalism.”
Lewis’ academic research focused on news culture and its manifestations in plagiarism, social media and data journalism. During his tenure at UFCJC, Lewis published 27 research articles in academic books or peer-reviewed journals, 24 of which were first- or sole-authored and presented at 26 seminars including three at international venues. He mentored 187 doctoral students over 10 years in the Perspectives class, and created 11 undergraduate and graduate courses, including five data journalism-related classes: Data Literacy, Data Journalism, Sports Data Journalism, Dataviz and Mapping, and Advanced Data Journalism.
In 2018, Lewis was named the James M. Cox, Jr. Foundation/The Palm Beach Post Professorship in New Media, which supports teaching, research and experimentation in emerging media. He was also named a Fulbright Scholar to Kuwait for the 2018-19 academic year, where he taught at the Gulf University for Science and Technology and studied data journalism in the Middle East.
He was one of eight UFCJC faculty members selected as inaugural recipients of a UF Term Professorship, for which he served three years starting in fall 2017. In 2013, he co-chaired a National Plagiarism Summit for journalists.
Before earning a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, Lewis worked for 25 years in newspapers ranging from small dailies to The Washington Post, where he was a financial desk copy editor. Other newspaper roles included publisher and editor of The (Butte) Montana Standard, editor of the Skagit Valley Herald (Mount Vernon, Washington), editor of the Corvallis (Oregon) Gazette-Times and city editor of the La Crosse (Wisconsin) Tribune.
Posted: October 1, 2024
Category: College News
Tagged as: Data Journalism, Data Literacy, Journalism, Mindy McAdams, Norm Lewis
