Dorothy Bland PhD

Dorothy M. Bland joined the faculty in 2013, and brings to the school more than 25 years of media experience including being a reporter, editor, media/marketing consultant and publisher.

Degrees:

• Ph.D., Florida State University
• Master of Business Administration, George Washington University
• Bachelor of Journalism, Arkansas State University

Experience:

Prior to becoming the dean,she served for five years as the journalism division director at Florida A&M University and as a journalism professor.

Bland served five years as Mayborn School of Journalism dean and was voted the "best dean" at UNT in the North Texas Daily Student Choice Awards Contest in 2018. She has more than a decade of experience as an administrator and professor in journalism programs. Bland has taught at least five different classes in-person and online at UNT as a professor.

In the news industry, she has managed multi-million dollar companies and online startups. From 1983-1990, she served in a variety of news reporting and editing roles at USA Today. Prior to joining Gannett in 1980 in Rockford, Illinois, she worked for daily newspapers in Arkansas and Tennessee. Bland has won numerous reporting/writing awards and served as a mentor to hundreds of journalists and students over the years.

In addition to her degrees, she is an alumna of the Harvard University Institute for Management and Leadership in Education as well as a former McCormick Fellow and a graduate of the Media Management Center's Advanced Executive Program at Northwestern University. Bland is an alumna of the Scripps Howard Academic Leadership Academy at Louisiana State University.

She has a passion for people, journalism and making a positive difference. Her research interests include media management, leadership, marketing, digital/social media and diversity.

Awards and Honors:

In 2019, Bland was profiled in Diverse Issues in Higher Education as one of the "Top 35 Diverse Women in Higher Education."

Under Bland's leadership, the Mayborn was the 2016 recipient of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Equity and Diversity Award for "outstanding" progress on these issues.

Bland earned three Gannett president's rings for excellence as a publisher. Her work has been published in a variety of publications ranging from USA Today to The Journal of Social Media and Society.

She has served on a variety of industry boards including the Newspaper Association of America Foundation and the Colorado Press Association. She has served on more than a dozen accrediting teams for the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.

Bland is featured in the book,The Edge of Change: Women in the 21st Century Press. She has made national and international presentations ranging from the Poynter Institute to the University of Ghana.