Professors

Director and Video

Steven D. Anderson, Ph.D., is the Ruth D. Bridgeforth Professor of Telecommunications in the School of Media Arts & Design at James Madison University. He primarily teaches classes in front-end web development, user experience, and video journalism. Prior to entering academe, Anderson was the environmental reporter and weekend weathercaster for KCNC television, a network O&O station in Denver, Colorado. His reporting often involved in-depth examination of local and regional environmental issues and an explanation of the science behind them. He also worked as a news photographer, weathercaster and news reporter at stations in Fresno, California and Fargo, North Dakota. He is an author of a textbook entitled “Exploring Electronic Media: Chronicles & Challenges” (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing). His websites have won top awards from the Broadcast Education Association (BEA Best of Festival) and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC Best of the Web Competition). Anderson is a former President of the Broadcast Education Association (BEA), the association for electronic media professors and industry professionals. He taught video and created the websites for presentation of student work in Urbino from 2011 to 2019. He directed the Urbino program from 2014 – 2019. 

Reporting

Doug Cumming, Ph.D., is an associate professor of journalism at Washington & Lee University with 26 years experience at metro newspapers and magazines. Since getting a Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill in mass communications, he has taught multimedia reporting and feature writing at Loyola University-New Orleans and at W&L in Virginia. Earlier, he worked at the newspapers in Raleigh, Providence and Atlanta, was editor of the Sunday Magazine in Providence and helped launch Southpoint monthly magazine in Atlanta. He won a George Polk Award and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. His book The Southern Press came out in 2009. He taught Reporting in Urbino in 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2019 and he taught in Armagh, Northern Ireland in 2014.

Michael Gold has been a writer, editor, and manager at award-winning publications, in print and online. He started his career as a reporter at the Bergen County (NJ) Record and the Boston Herald American. He was a founding writer and editor for Science 80, which won three National Magazine Awards while he was there. In 1986, Gold co-founded Hippocrates, now called Health, where he served as managing editor and executive editor. As a consultant for West Gold Editorial, he helped conceive and launch University Business and Dwell magazines as well as Thrive, an online health network produced by Time, Inc. and AOL. Gold has consulted for Inc, PC World, Consumer Reports, Executive Travel, and others, offering management advice, guiding major renovations, and coaching editorial staff. He has served as the editor of Strings magazine, edited several jazz arranging books for Berklee Press, and helped lead the magazine launch projects and online track for the Stanford Professional Publishing Courses. He is the author of A Conspiracy of Cells, a popular, nonfiction account of a scandal in cancer research. He taught in the Urbino Program each summer from 2011 to 2019.

Bob Marshall is a New Orleans journalist whose reporting on coastal and environmental issues has been recognized by two Pulitzer Prizes; the John H. Oakes Prize for Distinguished Environmental Reporting from Columbia University; the Keck Award for best science reporting from The National Academies of Sciences; regional and national Edward Murrow Awards from the Radio, Television and Digital News Association; Gannett Award for Innovative Watchdog Journalism from the Investigative Reports and Editors Association, The National Headliners Award and many others. Marshall’s early career included stints as sportswriter, sports columnist, outdoors editor, news feature writer, op-ed columnist, regional editor and feature writer for national magazines and host of national television and radio shows. He was elected to the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame for his work as an award winning sportswriter; to the Outdoors Writers Association of America’s Circle of Chief, its highest award for conservation writing, for his reporting and essays, and was an inaugural inductee into the Loyola University School of Communications Hall of Fame. He taught reporting in Cagli in 2008 and in Urbino in 2009 and from 2011 to 2019.

Susan West is a principal at West Gold Editorial consulting, where she has helped launch magazines such as Dwell, trained online editors at websites such as BabyCenter, and advised publications from the New England Journal of Medicine to Cooking Light and Acoustic Guitar. With an M.S. in science journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia, West started her career as a staff writer at Science News and Science 80. In 1986, she co-founded a popular health magazine called Hippocrates (now known as Health and owned by Time Inc.), which won four National Magazine Awards during her tenure. In 2009, she served as the founding editor of the travel magazine Afar, which was named Best Travel Magazine in North America by the Society of American Travel Writers. She has also been the executive editor of Smithsonian magazine and of the Food and Environment Reporting Network, an award-winning non profit newsroom that partners with major media outlets to produce in-depth stories about food, agriculture, and environmental health. For many years she oversaw the magazine launch projects at the Stanford Professional Publishing Course. She directed the magazine class in 2011 and 2012 and again from 2014 to 2019. She also directed the app program in 2013.

Photography

Susan Biddle was a Washington Post staff photographer for thirteen years and now freelances. She began her career photographing for the Peace Corps and later worked as a staff photographer for the Topeka Capital-Journal and the Denver Post. After five years at the Denver Post she left to become a White House photographer documenting the Presidency for the last year of the Reagan administration and all four years of the George H.W. Bush administration. She began working for the Washington Post in 1996. Prior to that she freelanced and her work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Life, National Geographic and other publications worldwide. She has participated in various book projects including Day in the Life of America, Day in the Life of Thailand, Hong Kong – Here Be Dragons, Day in the Life of the American Woman and America at Home. She has won awards with White House News Photographers Association and National Press Photographers Association. Susan taught photography in Urbino in 2012 and again from 2014 to 2019.

Bob Reeder has mentored graduate photojournalism students at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC. Prior to that he lived and worked in Amman, Jordan and Chisinau, Moldova, photographing political struggles in the former Soviet state while also teaching at the Independent Journalism Center. He retired in 2006 following 16 years at the Washington Post as staff photographer and assistant photo editor, before going on to help start the wildly successful Politico as photo editor/photographer before moving abroad. Since graduating college at Arizona State University he’s worked as a staff photographer in Shreveport, Louisiana; Bremerton, Washington; Chicago, Illinois; Middletown, New York and Washington, DC. His work has been widely published and recognized by White House Press Photographers Association, National Press Photographers Association, as well as other organizations. Reeder taught photography in Urbino in 2014, 2018 and in 2019.

Video

Rustin Greene spent his first career as a television writer/producer/director, earning two Los Angeles Area EMMY awards and three Cable ACE awards. Rusty is now in his second career, teaching in James Madison University’s School of Media Arts and Design. Rusty continues to write and produce, and his programs have earned several awards, including a third EMMY for a NASA education program. Rusty has been a Bridgeforth Endowed Professor, and received the JMU Alumni Association 2006 Distinguished Faculty Award. Rusty has been immersed in international education for many years, directing JMU’s London Study Abroad programs for nine years, and teaching and directing programs in Florence, Montreux, Cairo, and London. Greene taught video in Urbino from 2013 through 2019.

Interpreter Coordinator

Francesca Carducci received her degree in Pharmacy at the University of Urbino. She teaches English and is a lecturer (CEL) in the Department of Modern Literature and Philological-Linguistic Sciences at the University of Urbino. She is a member of the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) staff of the faculty of Computer Science and teaches in the English master’s program for Italian primary school teachers offered by the Department of Foreign Languages. Fran is originally from Buffalo, New York, and became interested in content-based teaching methodology as a consequence of her scientific background. She has revised and edited scientific articles to be published in English for years, and has created science and math courses in English for Italian students at almost every level. Francesca truly enjoys teaching both on-line and in the classroom and, after more than 20 years of living and working in Urbino, considers herself a bona fide “Urbinate.” She coordinated interpreters in Urbino from 2009 through 2019.