In addition to his duties as Newsplex Director, Randy Covington is on the faculty of the USC School of Journalism and Mass Communications, where he teaches classes in new media as well as ethics.

For WAN-IFRA, he serves as a professional trainer and consultant, working internationally with media houses such as the Financial Times in London, Impresa in Lisbon and El Tiempo in Bogota.

Covington’s background is in television news. He worked in management positions with television stations in Houston, Louisville, Boston, Philadelphia and Columbia, South Carolina. His honors include a du-Pont Columbia Citation, an Ohio State Award and four Emmys. In 1997, RTNDA/Carolinas recognized him as its news director of the year.

Covington started his career in print with newspapers in his home state of Indiana. He also has worked as a newswriter for the Associated Press and in radio.

Terri Moorer is the Newsplex program coordinator. She is responsible for organizing and the administrative details associated with Newsplex training, executive briefings, study tours as well as the use of Newsplex for other purposes.

Moorer, a native of Lexington, South Carolina, has an extensive media background. She served as office manager in the Columbia bureau of The Associated Press. Among other things, her duties included coordinating AP's coverage of elections in South Carolina.

She previously served as assistant to the news director of WIS TV in Columbia, where she served on the news management team and oversaw the administrative details of a television news department of more than 60 employees.

She also has worked in administrative positions for companies involved in television production, engineering and construction.

Charles Bierbauer has been the dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies since it was created in 2002 with the uniting of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications and School of Library and Information Science

Bierbauer came to the University of South Carolina after an award-winning, globe-trotting journalism career. Much as the college now spans the continuum from information seeking to multimedia communication, Bierbauer's career also covered a broad range of media experience.

From 1981-2001, Bierbauer was a correspondent for CNN in Washington. For nine years, he covered the Reagan and Bush administrations as CNN's senior White House correspondent. He joined CNN as its Pentagon correspondent, covered five presidential campaigns from 1984-2000, and spent five terms as the network's Supreme Court correspondent.

In 1997, he won an Emmy for anchoring CNN coverage of the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. He also is a recipient of the ACE Award from the Association of Cable Excellence and the Overseas Press Club Award for reporting on the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Scott Farrand, a former graphics editor with "The State" newspaper, brings to the University almost 20 years of journalism experience. His academic expertise is publication and print design, visual communication and informational graphics. During his career, he has received state, national and international honors for design work and informational graphics. In 1996, he accepted the Society of Newspaper Design's highest honor for the "Best Designed Newspaper in the World" for The State newspaper.

During the early 1980s, Farrand was busy pioneering the use of Macintosh computers for print publications. He beta-tested and helped develop the first versions of Adobe Illustrator and Freehand drawing programs for the Macintosh. He also created and published one of the first informational graphics using an Apple computer. This resulted in his hosting and mentoring journalists and publishers from the Southeast and Europe.

Farrand is currently working with the print and broadcast sequences of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications to help develops multimedia skills for senior semester students. The objective is to bring the students from these very different areas together to create new forms of online communication.

Doug Fisher is a veteran journalist who most recently spent nine years as the news editor for The Associated Press. His interests are in reporting, precision writing, ethics, media economics, and new ways to manage the increasing flow of information so that reporters and editors, as well as consumers, do not suffer "information burnout." He began his career in radio and television, became a newspaper reporter and then was a fellow in the Kiplinger Public Affairs Reporting Program at Ohio State University before joining the AP in 1983.

Among the major stories he has covered or helped cover were the shooting of civil-rights leader Vernon Jordan; the return of those who fled to Canada rather than serve in Vietnam; the collapse of credit union systems in Ohio and Rhode Island; the largest evacuation after a hazardouse chemical accident outside Dayton, Ohio; and development of many of the Air Force's secret weapons, including the stealth fighter, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. He has covered legislatures in Indiana, Ohio, Rhode Island, and South Carolina; has covered or helped direct coverage of presidential campaigns dating to Jimmy Carter's; and directed the AP's coverage in South Carolina of the Susan Smith murder case and trial and of numerous hurricanes.

Dr. August E. Grant is a technology futurist who specializes in research on new media technologies and consumer behavior. His teaching and research combine the study of traditional and emerging media, with emphases on media management, organizational structure, integrated communication and consumer behavior. He specializes in integrating both quantitative and qualitative research to provide a rich understanding of consumer behavior. in the past 20 years, he has conducted or supervised more than 120 survey research projects. On the qualitative side, he has conducted more than 60 focus groups since 1998. He has written numerous journal article and conference papers dealing with adoption and use of emerging communication technologies, broadband services, audience behavior, and theories of new media.

Dr. Grant is also one of the most prominent academics working in the field of convergent journalism. He is the co-editor of Understanding Media Convergence: The State of the Field and the co-author of Principles of Convergent Journalism, both published by the Oxford University Press.

Dr. Grant began his career in local broadcasting while earning his degree in Telecommunications from the University of Florida. His subsequent work in radio, television, and corporate communications inspired him to return to the University of Florida to earn a Master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communications.

A native of South Carolina, Van Kornegay teaches courses in information graphics for newspapers, graphic design and public relations. He has worked professionally in public relations, as a graphics reporter for the Associated Press in New York and in Albania as a consultant to the International Media Fund.

Dr. Keith Kenney has taught at USC for 22 years. At the undergraduate level, he teaches photography and international communication. At the graduate level, he teaches communication theory, literature reviews, and visual communication research. Dr. Kenney serves the photography profession as a contest judge and he serves academia as a member of the editorial board for Visual Communication Quarterly.

After completing his undergraduate degree, he worked as a newspaper photographer at The Sherman Democrat, a daily in northern Texas, for two years. Kenney earned his doctorate degree from Michigan State University, and he joined the faculty at USC in 1988. While at USC, Dr. Kenney taught advanced photo journalism to U.S. Army soldiers over the course of seven summers as part of contracts with the Department of Defense worth $530,000.

Dr. Kenney is currently the project director of a $750,000 grant from the Department of State for partnering with the Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management in Tbilisi, Georgia. Between 2010 and 2014, six USC faculty members will teach in Georgia and three faculty members from CSJMM will pursue a doctorate degree at USC.