Renee Hobbs is Professor and Founding Director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island, a new communication school that brings together the departments and programs in Journalism, Film/Media, Communication Studies, Public Relations, Writing & Rhetoric and a graduate program in Library and Information Studies, with 1300 undergrads, 350 grads and more than 80 fulltime faculty.
Supported by a generous gift by Dick Harrington, former CEO of Thomson/Reuters, Renee Hobbs will help the faculty to create a new school of national distinction, charged with the mission of using the power of communication and digital media to make a difference in the world.
Professor Hobbs is one of the nation’s leading authorities on media literacy education.
Through community and global service and as a researcher, teacher, advocate and media professional, Hobbs has worked to advance the quality of digital and media literacy education in the United States and around the world. She founded the Media Education Lab, whose mission is to improve the quality of media literacy education through research and community service.
In the early 1990s, she created the first national teacher education program in media literacy, the Harvard Institute on Media Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
