February 26, 2007
Advising award established by alumnus in the Greenlee School of Journalism
and Communication
Ames native and Iowa State University alumnus Louis Thompson, Jr., has established
the Harry Heath/Louis Thompson, Jr., Award in advising in the Greenlee School
of Journalism and Communication.
Thompson ('61, B.S., agricultural journalism; '69, M.S., journalism and communication)
has created the award to recognize an undergraduate or graduate faculty adviser
in the Greenlee School in the name of his own journalism adviser at Iowa State,
Harry Heath. Thompson, who currently resides in Orange, Va., is the chair of
the Greenlee School's Advisory Council.
"As an undergraduate Harry Heath was truly inspirational. He was a taskmaster
but he always had an ‘open door' to meet with students," Thompson
says. "I owe a great deal of my professional success over the years to
Harry's inspiration and that is why I decided to create an award in Harry Heath's
name to inspire other professors to give their guidance and inspiration to their
students."
Thompson says during his sophomore year at Iowa State, he got caught up in the
"social whirl" at Iowa State and those activities placed him on academic
probation.
"In came my adviser, Professor Heath," he said. "He convinced
me that I had a future in journalism if I buckled down. His concentration was
on the radio-TV news writing courses and he thought I had a future in broadcasting."
With Heath's encouragement, Thompson became a news announcer and writer for
WOI-TV and later was the station's acting news director and anchor. Thompson
went on to serve in the U.S. Army as the executive officer for the U.S. Information
Command in Saigon and later as assistant press secretary to President Gerald
Ford.
While growing up, Thompson had a first-hand look at how much of an influence
academic advising played in the lives of college students. His father, Louis
Thompson, was the associate dean of agriculture at Iowa State.
"My father was a very strong proponent of the role of counseling students
and if you were to ask students from the 30 years he was associate dean, the
one thing that would come through and still does, was his influence on their
lives as a counselor," Thompson said.
Undergraduate and graduate students in the Greenlee School will nominate journalism
faculty members for the Harry Heath/Louis Thompson, Jr., Award by submitting
a letter explaining how their faculty adviser has helped them in their academic
career. Finalists for the award must receive at least three letters of support
from students.
Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School, will work with the Student
Advisory Board to select the winner.
"We've received many letters from students about several faculty members,
and it's obvious that the culture of advising remains strong in Hamilton Hall."
Coincidentally, Bugeja's mentor also was Harry Heath, who recruited him
to teach at Oklahoma State University in 1979 following a career in United Press
International. Heath had left ISU a few years earlier to become director of
the Paul Miller School of Journalism and Broadcasting at OSU.
Heath's legacy, however, remains at Iowa State. Bugeja said that Heath "inspired
many of our most prominent alumni as a faculty adviser, including publisher
Roy Reiman for whom our gardens are named and Bob Greenlee for whom our School
is named."
"I'm especially grateful to Lou Thompson for remembering Harry with this
important award," Bugeja added.
"I felt that we should be attempting to inspire current faculty members
to focus on the importance of student counseling," Thompson said.
The first Harry Heath/Louis Thompson, Jr. Award will be announced at the Greenlee
School's Advisory Council meeting on April 19, 2007.
