About the Author

Stanley Baran, Ph.D

Stanley Baran earned his Ph.D. in communication research at the University of Massachusetts after taking his MA in journalism at the Pennsylvania State University. He taught for four years at Cleveland State University, then moved to the University of Texas. He led the Department of Radio-TV-Film's graduate program for six of his nine years in Austin and won numerous teaching awards there-the AMOCO Teaching Excellence Award as the best instructor on that 40,000 student campus, the College of Communication's Teaching Excellence Award as the college's best teacher, and was named Best Instructor in the Utmost Magazine Student Poll.

Dr. Baran moved to San Jose State University in 1987 and served nine years as Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts. At SJSU he was named President's Scholar as the university's outstanding researcher. Among his other awards are his designation as among "the top 3% of active researchers in communication" in a 1993 Communication Education study of the field's journals, the Broadcast Preceptor Award for Excellence in the Literature of Mass Communication from San Francisco State University, an Emmy nomination for a dramatic television series on mentally disabled people he produced, and a Fulbright Fellowship spent at the Institut fur Journalismus und Kommunikation at the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater in Hannover, Germany. Dr. Baran has published seven books and scores of scholarly articles and sits or has sat on the editorial boards of five journals. His work has been translated into a half a dozen languages.

Dr. Baran has played the saxophone in the jazz bands of both San Jose State and the University of Texas. He is an accomplished sailor and a struggling surfer.