Deborah Amos, the award-winning National Public Radio (NPR) Middle East correspondent, was back on the SUNY New Paltz campus this fall instructing a course titled “International Reporting: Blogging, Writing, Tweeting & Radio.”
“My experience at New Paltz this semester has been fantastic,” Amos said. “Eighteen students have been with me for eight weeks, all reporting the kinds of international subjects that I am passionately involved with in my own work. I’m happy just to get students interested in what I’m interested in, so I could talk to them about it. But when you teach, things can change; and what I find wonderful about teaching is watching students change and become journalists.”
It is not the first time Amos has worked at the College; in spring 2013 she served as the James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professor of Journalism. She continues to demonstrate a knack for stirring a passion for journalism in her students, by sharing her own stories of reporting abroad and her own insights into the righteous mission of dedicated news professionals.
That talent was on display once again at an Oct. 27 Q & A held with students, faculty and staff at the Honors Center. The Q & A session, organized with the support of the student-run Political Science and International Relations Club, found students taking advantage of the opportunity to discuss the political, social and personal realities in the Middle Eastern nations Amos has spent much of her career traveling through and reporting on.
A representative moment saw one student asking Amos if she could identify a single, constant idea she hopes to communicate through her work.
“I want to show normal people being normal, like us,” Amos responded. “I do that every chance I get, because I think that’s what’s missing in mainstream coverage. You have no idea about Damascus, or Baghdad, or Kabul; you don’t know that there are rich people and poor people, or where they go to school, or what they eat for breakfast unless you go there.”
That kind of message is resonating with New Paltz students like Stephanie Black ’15 (Communication Studies / Journalism).
“Professor Amos’s class is great,” Black said. “Her field experience is incredible, and her teaching is built off of that experience. She shares stories that are of interest to her, and the fact that they’ve stood out to her usually means they’re inspiring to me. I want to do well in her class.”
More information about Deborah Amos is available online.
