Photo note: For a photo of Cole,
see the end of the release.

N.C. broadcasters honor Cole with distinguished service award

By ZACH HOSKINS
UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication

CHAPEL HILL -- Dr. Richard Cole, dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, recently received the 2004 Earle Gluck Distinguished Service Award from the N.C. Association of Broadcasters.

The award goes to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the association and the broadcasting industry. Cole received the award April 4 during the annual induction ceremony at UNC for the association’s hall of fame and state halls of fame in journalism, advertising and public relations.

Don Curtis of Raleigh, head of Curtis Media Group and a past award recipient, surprised Cole with the honor.

"His patience and dedication have led to a school that now enjoys great facilities and a great reputation and turns out great graduates," Curtis said. Under Cole’s leadership, he said, the school has become recognized as one of the top — if not the top — journalism-mass communication programs in the nation.

"I don’t deserve it but am mighty happy to have received it," Cole said of the award. "For many years, I have tried to foster the role and the importance of broadcasting in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and now I believe we have an excellent program.

"Our faculty members and students are nothing short of outstanding," he said. "They produce a first-class news program, ‘Carolina Week,’ that has won virtually every national award open to students, including a national Emmy and many Broadcast Education Association honors."

A native of Forney, Texas, Cole earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. He joined the UNC school’s faculty in 1971 and became director of graduate studies in 1976. He succeeded Dr. Jack Adams as dean in 1979.

Cole will step aside as dean in June 2005 after 26 years. After a one-year sabbatical, he will return to the school’s faculty as the John Thomas Kerr Jr. Distinguished Professor.

The broadcasting association’s distinguished service award was authorized in 1973 in memory of Earle Gluck, a pioneer in North Carolina broadcasting, who played a major role in forming the association. The award may be given to people in the broadcast industry or retired from it.

Past winners have included the late Sam Ervin Jr., the U.S. senator from North Carolina who directed the Senate Watergate investigation and was regarded as the foremost constitutional expert in Congress; Jim Goodmon, president and chief executive officer of Capitol Broadcasting Co. in Raleigh; and Wade Hargrove, widely recognized as the nation’s leading business attorney in broadcasting.

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Photo url: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/faculty/deans/cole_richard.jpg

School contact: Zach Hoskins, (919) 966-3323, zhoskins@email.unc.edu.
News Services contact: L.J. Toler, 919-962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu