One of our program’s best qualities and a source of pride is the personal attention we pay our students. Faculty members, who have considerable professional experience, get to know students as individuals as they advise them from their entry to university life to their placement in the job market. Full-time faculty members include:
Kiel Thorlton, Director, School of Mass Communication and Associate Professor
B.S. in film and television, M.F.A. in film directing, Regent University. Kiel has been working in film and television for over 10 years in a variety of roles including live television, sports, feature films, concerts, and everything in between. His projects have been screened, streamed, and broadcast all over the world. He is an award-winning writer and director whose feature film, “A Place Called Home,” has been distributed globally. His research is focused on long form narrative and the role of the director in film.
Email: [email protected]
Tim Edwards, Professor
B.A. in mass communications with a journalism and public relations emphasis, Southern Arkansas University; M.S.M.C. in mass communication with a radio and television emphasis, Arkansas State University; Ph.D. in communication, University of Kentucky.
Professional experience: A year and a half newspaper reporting experience, three years radio public affairs production.
Teaching experience: UA Little Rock since 1992. Specialty areas: newswriting, reporting, audio/video production, pop culture.
Email: [email protected]
Chris Robinson, Associate Professor
A.B., Dartmouth College; M.F.A. in film, Columbia University; Ph.D. in film and media studies, University of Kansas. Robinson is a film historian and a curator for the Telluride Film Festival. His research interests include global cinema, the history of art-house films and distribution and exhibition, and changing film technologies and perception of the moving image. He has taught at Emerson College and Columbia University. He has worked in production, distribution, and exhibition, and also has served as post-production editor on numerous documentaries for HBO, ESPN and PBS, including films that screened at the Sundance Film Festival. His work has screened at Telluride, the Seattle Film Festival and the Lisbon and Estoril Film Festival. He also works for Turner Classic Movies.
Email: [email protected]
Roger Horn, Assistant Professor
B.A. in Social Theory, Structure, & Change, SUNY; MA in Visual & Media Anthropology, Free University Berlin; PhD in Cultural Anthropology, University of Cape Town. He has taught at UA Little Rock since 2024 following 10 years at other colleges, universities, & film schools. He has worked for over a decade in freelance film/TV (Los Angeles; Nashville; Cape Town), as a selection committee member for multiple film festivals and has screened his independent films nationally and internationally at leading film festivals and conferences. His research/specialty areas are documentary, ethnographic, experimental and fiction film.
Email: [email protected]
Richard Shumate, Assistant Professor
B.A. in Journalism, University of Wyoming; M.A. in journalism, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; Ph.D. in Mass Communication, University of Florida. Dr. Rich Shumate is a news media historian whose academic research focuses on audience responses to political coverage in the news media, specifically perceptions of news media bias among partisans. He is the author of Barry Goldwater, Distrust in Media, and Conservative Identity: The Perception of Liberal Bias in the News (Lexington Books, 2021), which examines why U.S. conservatives developed the perception that the news media have a liberal bias during the early 1960s. Prior to shifting into academia, Shumate worked for more than 25 years as a journalist, with experience on newspapers and magazines in Georgia, North Carolina, and Wyoming. He also spent 10 years at CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta, working as a senior writer for CNN.com and as an editor on the network’s domestic newsgathering desk.
Email: [email protected]
Curry Wilson, Assistant Professor
B.A. in Public Relations, Texas Tech University; M.A. in Mass Communication, Texas Tech University; Ph.D. in Communication and Information, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her current work focuses on the social impact of ethnic advocacy. Specifically, her research integrates concepts such as social identity, stereotyping, and advocacy support to better understand how communication shapes public perceptions and social change.
Email: [email protected]
Adjunct Faculty
Warren Byrd
Email: [email protected]
Frank Fellone
Email: [email protected]
Alana Hamill
Email: [email protected]
Daniel Nettleton
Email: [email protected]
Denver Peacock
Email: [email protected]
Bradley Pierce
Email: [email protected]
Coorigan Revels
Email: [email protected]
Brittany Tate
Email: [email protected]
Byron Tate
Email: [email protected]
Staff
Brant Collins, Director of University Television
Brant Collins is a proud Navy Veteran who holds a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Arkansas Tech University. He brings over 20 years of experience in the media and marketing industry. His extensive expertise includes TV Broadcasting, Video Production, and strategic marketing.
Email: [email protected]
Karin Legard Jones, Administrative Analyst
Email: [email protected]
Eric Pardoe, Technical Operations Manager
Eric Pardoe is a UALR alum and multimedia professional with over 15 years of experience in audio and video production. His expertise includes live, studio and master audio engineering, commercial and educational audio/visual installation and support, and performance venue technical management.
Email: [email protected]
Emeritus Faculty
Mary Jean Thomas, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., (1977-1992)
Professor of Radio, Television, and Film
Edward Jay Friedlander, B.S., M.A., Ed.D.(1975-1996)
Professor of Journalism
Luther Sanders, B.S., M.A., Ed.D., (1974-2000)
Professor of Journalism
Lynda E. Wilson, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., (1980-2000)
Professor of Radio, Television, and Film
David M. Guerra, B.A, M.S, Ph.D., (1976-2005)
Professor of Radio, Television, and Film
Bruce L. Plopper, B.S., M.A., Ph.D., (1990-2012)
Professor of Journalism
Jeanne Norton Rollberg, B.A., M.A., (1983-2016)
Associate Professor of Journalism
David Weekley, B.A., M.Ed., (1998-2019)
Senior Instructor Radio, Television, and Film
Amy Barnes, B.A., M.A., APR, (2006-2020)
Associate Professor, Public Relations
Jamie M. Byrne-McCollum, B.S., M.S., Ph. D., (2002-2024)
Professor of Public Relations