USF-Tampa, home office of FSNE, has a new director of the School of Mass Communications. Frederick W. Pearce, Ph.D. succeeds Dr. Jay Friedlander. Jay requested a return to teaching after leading the department for 15 years.
Pearce, 59, comes to USF after 19 years as Professor of Telecommunications and Chair of the Department of Journalism and Public Communication at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Fred has a broad background in telecommunications and information technologies. He has worked in the television news and television production industry. While in Alaska, he was Treasurer/Vice President of the Alaska Press Club, Director of Internships, and producer of JPC television productions that included local and regional programming in news, sports, and public affairs. His academic background is in rhetoric and documentary film, news production, documentary film, and communications and media research.
In 1992, Pearce was appointed the Director of the Applied Communications Laboratory at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Under his direction, the lab developed and deployed what is now the State of Alaska Emergency Services Network. In 1996, he was awarded the “Alaska Telemedicine Testbed Project, a five year $2.8M telemedicine research and demonstration project funded by the National Library of Medicine. Since 1999, this project has been implemented by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and received over $62 M of federal funding for operations at 255 sites throughout frontier Alaska.
In 2002 he was awarded the “Alaska Medical Informatics Initiative (AMII),” a five-year $2.0M research and demonstration project for monitoring trauma patients from the point of trauma to the emergency room. Funded by the Department of Defense, AMII is a set of “internet medical tools” designed for emergency medical evacuations and clinical decision support for remote healthcare in the “digital age.”
Fred is a graduate of Iona College. He holds his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.
