Jan Lauren Boyles currently serves as Professor and Director of the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism. Most recently, she served as Associate Director and Professor (with tenure) at Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication. She previously held appointments as Faculty Fellow for High Impact Practices within ISU’s Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost and as Director of Graduate Education within ISU’s Greenlee School. Boyles joined Iowa State from the Pew Research Center in Washington, and previously served as a Google Journalism Fellow. She recently completed a four-year elected term on the Board of Directors for her professional disciplinary association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. In this capacity, she acted as the head of the Council of Divisions, the governing body that organizes the Association’s annual conference for its 2,900 members. In 2023, she was named International Engagement Editor for Digital Journalism, and now acts as the journal’s Associate Editor. In 2024, she completed a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. At ISU, she has been recognized with internal honors for exemplary research, instruction, service, global engagement and graduate mentoring.

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As an academic, Boyles has received several industry fellowships. She was selected by AEJMC as a Scripps Howard Visiting Professor in Journalism, spending two weeks in residence at The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. She also was chosen as a Disruptive Educator Fellow by the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism. She was selected as a Big XII Faculty Fellow for research collaborations at the University of Kansas. Her research centers on the intersections of news, data/code and civic technology. Her published works have been cited more than 1,300 times. She has been named as the Top Reviewer for ICA’s Journalism Studies Division. She also received the Mid-Career Achievement Award from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

An award-winning instructor and academic advisor, Boyles has taught courses in media law, media ethics, big data & society, reporting, narrative journalism and news writing. At Iowa State, Boyles has received the Harry Heath Advising Award, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Award for Outstanding Early Achievement in Teaching and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Mentoring Award. While at West Virginia, she was honored as the inaugural recipient of the University’s Nicholas Evans Award for Academic Advising and the inaugural recipient of the School of Journalism’s Golden Quill Award for Teaching.

In service, Boyles has been an elected member of the Faculty Senate at both West Virginia and Iowa State Universities. She also has served on the College’s Strategic Planning team and Iowa State’s Governance Council, among other leadership committee appointments. At the national level, she was selected for the Scripps Howard Foundation Leadership Academy for aspiring deans and directors, which was hosted at Syracuse University. She also was chosen for AEJMC’s Institute for Diverse Leadership and is currently co-chairing AEJMC’s Presidential Task Force on Undergraduate Engagement. For this work, she received the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Award for Institutional Service.

A native of Fairmont, W.Va., Boyles graduated summa cum laude with undergraduate and master’s degrees in journalism from WVU. She is a member of the WVU Order of Augusta, the highest University-wide academic distinction bestowed annually to eight graduating seniors. She represented the University at the state-level of the Rhodes Scholarship competition. She is also a former newspaper reporter/intern for several publications in West Virginia. She received her PhD from American University’s School of Communication in May 2014. Her dissertation encompassed a case study of the New Orleans news ecosystem post-Katrina.

Beyond academic and professional work, Jan is a diehard fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Let’s go Bucs!

Follow her @JanLaurenB on Twitter.