Celebrating the 2025 Alumni Award Winners

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s 2025 Alumni Awards Ceremony will occur on Friday, April 25 and will honor a group of accomplished alumni, faculty and staff members, as well as undergraduate and graduate students.

The group of alumni we will be celebrating spans career paths from teaching, digital media, law, entrepreneurship and more. Our impressive alumni will be recognized alongside our James L. Baughman Senior Achievement Award winners, Teaching Excellence Award and Leadership Award winners, and Terry Hynes Innovative Leadership winners. Please join us in honoring these outstanding alumni, faculty and staff, and students and their incredible accomplishments. On, Wisconsin!

Ralph O. Nafziger Award

This award is named for the late Ralph O. Nafziger, who was director of the school from 1949 until his retirement in 1966. Nafziger built an international reputation as a leader in journalism education. The honorees receive recognition for showing remarkable professional initiative and promise within 10 years of graduation.

Steve Horn is the Executive Creative Director at Translation, an advertising agency that specializes in sports, music and entertainment to help clients solve their biggest business problems by standing out in culture. Horn’s most notable work was nominated for a Primetime Emmy and is in the permanent archive at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. He’s been awarded almost every major award for advertising including a Sports Emmy, a Titanium Cannes Lion, the Grand Clio, the GRANDY, over a dozen One Show and D&AD pencils, and several Webbys. Horn was also honored by Adweek as one of the industries “100 Most Innovative and Inspiring Individuals” in 2022. Check out our infographic about Horn’s impressive achievements.

Distinguished Service Award

Each year the School honors outstanding alumni. Faculty select award winners based on their achievements in all fields of journalism and mass communication.

Conor Caloia was one of the founders of Forward Madison FC and is now the Chief Operating Officer and Managing Partner of the club and Breese Stevens Field. In his roles he worked with the community to develop the name, team colors and identity. Forward Madison has led USL League One in all revenue categories, and Caloia has been recognized by the League as the President of the Year for three consecutive years. Caloia is also the Managing Partner of hummel North America, a 101-year old Danish Sportswear brand focused on soccer. Learn more about Caloia and his accomplishments in our Q&A.

Samuel Freedman is an award-winning author, professor, and journalist. He is currently a tenured professor at Columbia Journalism School where he teaches a seminar in developing non-fiction books. He has been named the nation’s Outstanding Journalism Educator by The Society of Professional Journalists and received Columbia University’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. Additionally, Freedman has authored 10 books, most recently “Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights,” and been a finalist for a variety of awards. Learn more about Freedman and his accomplishments in our Q&A.

Yoko McIvor Lieberman is the Vice President of Global Brand Marketing at Ralph Lauren, the largest American luxury fashion brand. In her role, Lieberman has overseen marketing for their flagship brand, Polo, and built integrated cross-brand strategies across the $6.5B portfolio. She has led the brand through pivotal evolutions with the executive committee, large scale global brand campaigns, and several crowning achievements. Lieberman is now studying the power of brands to influence sustainability advancement with Harvard Business School’s Sustainable Business Strategy program. Check out our infographic about Lieberman’s exciting achievements.

Renee Moe is the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of United Way of Dane County, an organization that unites a diverse coalition of local nonprofits, businesses, cross-sector community leaders, families, volunteers and donors to tackle societal challenges that no single entity can solve alone. Beginning her career with United Way in 1998, Moe has risen from an intern to the Vice President and now, CEO. She has dedicated over 25 years to listening, learning and leading, forging innovative solutions to address the root causes of the community’s most pressing people issues. Learn more about Moe and her accomplishments through our Q&A.

Jessie Stomski serves as General Counsel for the Prairie Island Indian Community, where she oversees legal and government relations matters for the Tribe and its entities. Stomski is the 2022 Mitchell Hamline College of Law Distinguished Alumni award recipient, and was recognized in 2019 by Minnesota Lawyer Magazine as In-House Attorney of the Year. In 2015, the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development named Stomski to its 40 under 40 award-recipient list. Minnesota Super Lawyers magazine named Stomski a Minnesota “Rising Star” for several consecutive years. Stomski currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Mitchell Hamline School of Law and the Board of Directors for the Minnesota American Indian Bar Association. Check out our infographic about Stomski’s exciting career.

Sharon Dunwoody Early Career Award

The Sharon Dunwoody Early Career Award recognizes distinguished achievement in teaching and research within 5-10 years of graduation from the PhD program.

Bryan McLaughlin is an Associate Professor at Texas Tech University where he teaches advertising in the College of Media & Communication. McLaughlin’s current research examines problematic news consumption and its implications for individual and societal health. His scholarly work has been published in a variety of journals including Communication Research, Human Communication Research, Media Psychology, New Media & Society, Health Communication, and Mass Communication & Society. He is currently working with co-authors Melissa Gotlieb and Devin Mills on their book, “Consumed by the news: Understanding problematic news consumers and how they perceive and experience the political world.” Check out our infographic about McLaughlin’s impressive achievements.

JungHwan Yang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and the David F. Linowes Faculty Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Yang’s research explores how individuals access, engage with, and respond to political information in today’s fragmented media landscape. His current work investigates media coverage of real-world events, particularly mass shootings and police shootings, to uncover biases in news production and analyze which events receive media attention and which are overlooked. Yang is also the founder and director of the Computational Laboratory for Online and Ubiquitous Data (CLOUD), an interdisciplinary research group dedicated to advancing communication studies through computational methods and mentoring students. Learn more about Yang and his accomplishments in our Q&A.

Harold L. Nelson Award

This award is given for distinguished contribution to journalism and mass communication education. The award is named for Harold L. Nelson, director of the School of Journalism from 1966 to 1975. Recipients have taught in some of the most distinguished journalism programs in the nation.

Gerald Baldasty is a professor emeritus in Communication at the University of Washington. His research and teaching are focused on journalism history, with an emphasis on the politics and business of U.S. mass media in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Baldasty served as a faculty member at Washington from 1978 until his retirement from full-time teaching and administrative roles in 2019. During his 41 years on the faculty at the University of Washington, he taught courses on mass media and society, journalism history, and freedom of speech and the press. Learn more about Baldasty and his accomplishments in our Q&A.

Nojin Kwak is a Professor in the Department of Communication and the Vice Provost for International Education at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB). At UB, Kwak oversees global partnerships, UB’s branch campus in Singapore, international programs and services and global research programs and initiatives. Kwak’s research is centered around the role of communication media in civic and political engagement. His recent studies analyze the patterns of social media use and their influence on community involvement, deliberative openness, political persuasion, and political participation. He is also a co-director of the Communication and Emerging Media (CEM) Lab in the UB Department of Communication and the principal organizer of the Digital Asia symposium. Check out our infographic about Kwak’s notable achievements.

James L. Baughman Senior Achievement Award

Congratulations to our 2025 James L. Baughman Senior Achievement Award winners! These students were selected for their outstanding academic, professional and community service achievements.

Cat Carroll, Class of 2025.

Noa Chamberlin, Class of 2025

Brooke Fandrich, Class of 2025

Lily Spanbauer, Class of 2025

Sara Stanislawski, Class of December 2024

Otto Xin, Class of 2025

Terry Hynes Innovative Leadership Award

The Terry Hynes Innovative Leadership Award honors the leaders and mentors that strive to make the School of Journalism a place where students are excited to study communication and feel a sense of community throughout their time in Vilas. The award provides financial support for faculty and staff to take advantage of opportunities that enable them to develop, deepen and deploy their strengths; identify and compensate for their weaknesses; and master skills of strategic thinking and effective communication in order to make a positive impact on the lives of those they serve in the School.

Rowan Calyx, Administrative Support

Stacy Forster, Teaching Faculty III

Debra Pierce, Distinguished Teaching Faculty III

Graduate Student Awards

Teaching Excellence Award

Congratulations also to our graduate students who received the SJMC Teaching Excellence Award. The Teaching Excellence Award is presented in recognition of outstanding and inspirational teaching performance.

Leadership Award

Congratulations to our graduate students who received the SJMC Leadership Award. This award is in recognition of outstanding service as a leader and organizer of the Communication Crossroads Conference.