Advisory Council

Patricia Dean, who earned a B.S. in Journalism from Iowa State in 1968, is the Associate Director of the School of Journalism, Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

She also is a Professor of Professional Practice and teaches television news reporting classes. Her research interests focus on local television news and reporting on public policy issues.

Dean earned her master's degree in communication studies from the School of Speech at Northwestern University. In 2003, She joined USC from Northwestern where she taught for 16 years. Dean also served as Chair of the Broadcast News sequence for six years. She was honored for her teaching in 1999 with the prestigious Northwestern Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award.

Prior to academia, Dean was a professional broadcast journalist in Chicago for more than 18 years at stations owned by three major broadcast networks, where she worked as a news show producer, executive producer, writer/producer for two award winning investigative units and director of programming.

Her work has been honored with numerous awards, including two George Foster Peabody Awards, two Chicago Television Academy Emmy Awards, the Gavel Award of the American Bar Association, and the National Press Club Award for Best Consumer Journalism. She was awarded the Greenlee School’s James W. Schwartz Award for Distinguished Service to Journalism and Communication in 2006.

Dean is a member of the Radio Television News Directors Association, the National Association of Television Arts & Sciences, the Association for Women Journalists, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the International Communication Association and the Academy of Political Science.