For more information contact sppnews@gmu.edu.
Frank
Sesno, former senior vice president and Washington, D.C., bureau chief
for CNN, joins the faculty of the School of Public Policy and the College
of Arts and Sciences as University Professor of Public Policy and Communication.
Sesno will teach an undergraduate special topics course on media bias in the Communication Department this fall, and next spring he will teach a graduate course in the School of Public Policy and a course on current issues for the larger university community. In addition to teaching, Sesno will hold a series of public forums on journalism, the media, and public policy. The first one, he said, will probe the role and impact of the media in the wake of 9/11. He will host regular on-air town meetings on GMU-TV and also is collaborating with the university and WETA-TV to develop a weekly local 30-minute public affairs series that will combine the reach and mission of public television with the intellect, expertise, and diversity the university has to offer.
"I see this as an opportunity to drill down and look at some key issues in public policy and journalism-to make a difference on matters of policy and media," said Sesno. "George Mason University was especially attractive to me because of its entrepreneurial nature and the opportunities it presents for serious academic pursuit. I'm looking forward to working with the students, and hope to bring to George Mason my passion for quality journalism along with public and academic engagement."
At CNN, Sesno supervised the
network's largest newsgathering team and was responsible for the editorial
direction of Washington coverage, including the White House, Congress,
the Pentagon, and the State Department. He also covered national issues
and politics as a reporter, analyst, and anchor for CNN, and was host
of the network's weekend public affairs program, Late Edition with Frank
Sesno, for seven years. Sesno won an Emmy for coverage of the 1993 flooding
in the Midwest.
September 10 Sesno announced
he was leaving the network after 17 years, but "I doubled back and
had to ask myself a lot of hard questions on September 11," he said.
He stayed on to help see the bureau through the next few months.