Don A. Grady, associate dean and associate professor emeritus, School of Communications, Elon University, has been named the 2022 Broadcast Education Association’s Distinguished Education Service Award (DESA) winner.
As an early communications faculty member at Elon, Grady became the program’s first department chair and worked closely with faculty in writing his program’s scholarship statement, teaching enhancement plan, program policies statement, and assessment plan. As associate dean, his duties included administrative support for internal operations, leadership of school initiatives, oversight of curriculum and course management, teaching enhancement and evaluation, assessment of student learning, and oversight of an online undergraduate research journal. Grady regularly taught courses in broadcasting, senior research capstone, and study-abroad.
Grady, associate dean and associate professor emeritus retired after 35-plus years of leadership in the School of Communications at Elon University. He concludes a distinguished academic career after over forty-years of administrative and teaching experience in broadcasting, and nearly 50 years of participation in BEA. He first attended a BEA conference as an undergraduate student and has regularly participated in the organization since the early 1970s. Grady has made numerous panel presentations on the assessment of student learning at BEA and AEJMC conferences. He served as the facilitator and judge for BEA research in progress sessions, judge for BEA and AEJMC conference paper competitions and awards, and judge for BEA and RTNDA faculty video and radio competitions. In 2018, he organized a panel on media analytics for the BEA Research Division. He also served as the 2018 BEA Research Symposium chair, for which he organized a day-long symposium on analytics. Subsequently, he served as editor and contributor of a BEA publication series book titled, The Golden Age of Data: Media Analytics in Study & Practice. His primary research interests pertain primarily to the form of media messages.
Over many years, Grady served two terms as an elected member of ACEJMC. He has participated in numerous panels, workshops and bootcamps on assessment of student learning at BEA regional and national conferences, and published several articles about assessment in the Journal of Media Education. Grady has conducted numerous independent program reviews for other BEA affiliated programs and participated in writing and implementing self-study materials for ACEJMC accreditation. Prior to joining the faculty at Elon in 1985, Grady taught at N.C. State University and worked for nearly a dozen years in television and radio. He completed his Ph.D. in Mass Communication Research and M.A. in Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill, and his B.A. in Communication at N.C. State University.
The DESA is awarded to an individual who has made a significant and lasting contribution to the American system of electronic media education. The award will be presented to Don Grady during BEA’s 2022 annual convention awards ceremony on Saturday, April 23, 2022 For a list of previous recipients and information on the DESA visit BEA’s website.
