In addition to a traditional faculty oversight committee that monitors the academic integrity of interdisciplinary studies, an advisory board of practicing journalists and university faculty familiar with journalism instruction at Texas A&M University has been appointed to help guide the interdisciplinary minor in journalism. 

This advisory committee has two responsibilities: 

1. Work with the dean of the College of Liberal Arts to perform an annual review of the program as well as a formal, five-year review. 
2. Collaborate with the program’s teaching faculty to produce innovative pedagogy and to guarantee the program fairly balances a liberal arts education with professional needs.

The board’s professional members are Texas A&M journalism graduates.  The board members are:

Kelly Brown.  She is managing editor of The Bryan-College Station Eagle.  For more than three years, she has directed day-to-day and long-term news coverage for the paper. In 1989, Brown graduated with a journalism degree from Texas A&M.  She worked for two years at The Battalion, the university’s student newspaper. After graduation, Brown spent two years reporting for Harte-Hanks Community Newspapers in Dallas, then joined The Eagle in 1991 as a police and general assignments reporter. The following year Brown was promoted to assistant city editor and was city editor when she left the paper in 1994. During a two-year absence from the newsroom, Brown worked as a private investigator and freelance writer. She returned to The Eagle in June 1996 as the senior reporter covering the courthouse and was promoted four years later to managing editor.  Brown has won numerous reporting and writing awards including four Headliners from the Austin Press Club. She also teaches a reporting class at Texas A&M.

Thomas DeFrank.  He is a veteran political journalist and author. As Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News, he directs coverage of the capital for the country’s third-largest metropolitan daily newspaper and is considered one of Washington’s most respected President-watchers. He was Newsweek’s senior White House correspondent until 1995.  DeFrank, second in length of tenure only to Helen Thomas, has covered the White House since 1970.  He also is former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

The 2004 Presidential campaign is the tenth he has covered in 35 years as a Washington reporter.  He has also covered the resignation of one President, the impeachment of a second, and was an eyewitness to two assassination attempts against a third.  DeFrank also has covered 15 Soviet-American summits beginning with the historic 1975 Ford-Brezhnev meeting at Vladivostok.  He reported extensively on the Persian Gulf war and traveled to Saudi Arabia with President George H. W. Bush in November 1990 and then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and General Colin Powell in December 1990. In April 1997 he accompanied Vice President Gore on his trip to China.  In 1973 DeFrank covered the return of American POWs from Vietnam at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines.  DeFrank’s work has earned him several prestigious reporting awards including one from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting from the 1987 Reagan-Gorbachev summit.

His reporting has been praised as “riveting.” ABC News calls him “excellent, well-connected and influential” and “legendary.”  The American Journalism Review has rated him “one of the unsung stars of Washington journalism.”  The New York Times ranked him as one of the country’s best political ghostwriters. And former President Gerald R. Ford calls him “one of the finest journalists I have ever known. Everyone I know feels the same way: you are fair, trustworthy and professional.”

DeFrank co-authored Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms, the best-selling memoirs of controversial Republican political consultant Ed Rollins published in August 1996. He also co-authored The Politics of Diplomacy, the memoirs of former Secretary of State James Baker III, and Quest for the Presidency 1992, a critically acclaimed, behind-the-scenes look at the Clinton-Bush election.

DeFrank edited the campus newspaper and graduated with high honors from Texas A&M in 1967. He also has a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota.

Leroy Dorsey.  Dorsey served as interim head of the Department of Journalism at Texas A&M from September 2001 to August 2003 and is associate head of the Department of Communication.  He earned a Ph.D. in speech communication and American history from Indiana University in 1995 before joining the Texas A&M faculty.  An associate professor of communication, Dorsey teaches courses in American Oratory, Political Communication, Versions of the American Dream, and Argumentation and Debate.  He received the 2003 Association of Former Students college-level Distinguished Teaching Award.  Dorsey’s research has appeared in Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, and other journals.  In 1995, he received the Aubrey Fisher Award for the outstanding article published in The Western Journal of Communication. His other scholarly activities include serving on the editorial board of Rhetoric & Public Affairs, editing The Presidency and Rhetorical Leadership (2002), and contributions to African American Orators.

Michael Landauer.  Landauer is Assistant Editorial Page Editor for Suburbs for The Dallas Morning News.  He graduated with a journalism degree from Texas A&M in 1997. During his senior year, he was editor of the school’s newspaper—The Battalion—when it was named one of the nation’s top ten college newspapers. Landauer worked as a copy editor and opinion editor for the Arlington Morning News before developing suburban editorial pages for The Dallas Morning News in Collin County.

Randall S. Sumpter.  Sumpter is an associate professor of communication and Coordinator of Journalism Education at Texas A&M.  His research interests include late 19th-century news practices and the sociology of contemporary media. Sumpter has published research in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, American Journalist, Communication Law & Policy, Journalism History, Newspaper Research Journal, and Critical Studies in Mass Communication. He also co-authored a chapter for the recently published Handbook of Media Studies. At Texas A&M, he has taught courses in media history, editing, public opinion, computer-assisted reporting, and research methods for graduate students.  Sumpter’s media experience includes five years as a reporter and editor with daily newspapers, five years as a writer and Houston bureau chief for the Oil & Gas Journal, and six years as an assistant managing editor for an international newsletter.  He has participated in fellowship programs at the Freedom Forum, Poynter Institute, and American Society of Newspaper Editors. In 1996, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and joined the Texas A&M faculty the same year.