Rate My Professor Jennifer Thomas

Jennifer Thomas serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Journalism, and Film at Howard University's Cathy Hughes School of Communications. She is also Director of the Annenberg Honors Program and Journalism Sequence Coordinator. A Howard University alumna, Thomas earned her Bachelor of Arts in broadcast journalism from Howard University and a Master of Arts in Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Prior to academia, she worked as an Executive Producer for CNN Headline News, accumulating over 25 years as an award-winning broadcast journalist. Since joining Howard in 2013 as an assistant professor and advancing to associate professor, she has focused on preparing students for careers in media through hands-on training, including capstone courses like NewsVision and advising the Howard University Association of Black Journalists, which won NABJ Student Chapter of the Year.

Thomas has received significant recognition for her teaching excellence, including selection as a Scripps Howard Foundation Teacher of the Year honoree for transforming her classroom into a remote newsroom amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As a Fulbright Specialist, she traveled to Rhodes University in South Africa in summer 2023, participated in World Press Freedom events in Tanzania in 2024, and was a key speaker at World Press Freedom Week in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2019. Her students have earned first-place awards from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and joined international programs such as CNN Newsroom training in Abu Dhabi. Thomas's publications include 'Reassessing Journalistic Pedagogy: Howard University's Broadcast Coverage during the 2014 Midterm Election' in Media International Australia (2015) and 'Pageantry & Politics: Miss Howard University from Civil Rights to Black Power' in The Journal of Negro Education (2018). She contributes to public discourse on fake news identification, DEI in journalism, press freedom, and Black media history through lectures, media interviews, and international dialogues.