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Donald G. Godfrey, Ph.D. and Professor Emeritus, has been named the recipient of the 2017 Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Lifetime Achievement in Scholarship (LAS).

Dr. Godfrey is a broadcast historian, a broadcast educator, and a professional broadcaster. He is a past president of BEA; served as president of the National Council of Communication Associations; and a past editor of the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. He is the founding chair of the BEA’s Festival of Media Arts, Research Committee and annual Research Symposium.

He has worked fifteen years in commercial radio and television, with twelve years at KIRO-TV, Seattle, WA, in production, and continues his consulting in corporate television.

Dr. Godfrey has published in all the leading refereed journals of our discipline and has written and edited more than a dozen books. A second edition of his biography of Philo T. Farnsworth: The Father of Television, in the University of Utah Press has, just been released in paperback, 2017. He has written C. Francis Jenkins: Film and Television Pioneer, published by University of Illinois Press, 2014 and Electronic Media History: A Routledge Reader, with Susan Brinson, 2015. His other published works include: Methods of Historical Analysis in Electronic Media; Historical Dictionary of American Radio; Television in America: Local Station History across the Nation, with Michael D. Murray; and Reruns on File: A Guide to Broadcast Archives.

He has received multiple honors for his research: BEA’s Distinguished Education Service Award; Mormon History Association’s Best Documentary Book Award; NATAS, Silver Circle Society Inductee; NEH Archives Panelist; and has work on the Choice, “Outstanding Academic Books List.”

Dr. Godfrey says his greatest reward is still teaching. He still enjoys mentoring his doctoral students. He retired 2012, as Professor Emeritus, after twenty-four years at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University and forty-two years in academia including working at the University of Arizona, Southern Utah University, and the University of Washington.

BEA’s Lifetime Achievement in Scholarship recognizes significant contributions to research and scholarship involving broadcast and electronic media. Recipients are evidenced by related extensive publication in books and leading journals, for at least twenty years. The LAS will be awarded to Dr. Godfrey at BEA’s annual convention at the Las Vegas Westgate during a ceremony and reception on the evening of Sunday, April 23rd. He will be giving a formal presentation, History and the Human Experience on the afternoon of Monday, April 24th.

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