Howard University Associate Professor, Jennifer C. Thomas, a native of Huntsville, Alabama and graduate of J. O. Johnson H. S., is the recent recipient of two notable honors in education. She was named the Scripps Howard Foundation/ Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC), Teacher of the Year, one of the industry’s top honors for outstanding journalism. She has also been named as a 2020 Fulbright awardee as a scholar in the Fulbright Specialist Program.
Jennifer was to accept the Teacher of the Year honor in August at the AEJMC Annual Conference in San Francisco, but will instead accept it during its virtual conference. She will take part in the Fulbright Specialist Program next summer, and will spend six weeks at Rhodes University in Makhanda, along the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Her studies will focus on media and journalistic freedom.
Jennifer is the journalism sequence coordinator and teaches broadcast journalism in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film in the Cathy Hughes School of Communications, at Howard University, her alma mater. She is a former award-winning journalist and CNN executive producer who covered major events such as the 9/11 Terror Attacks and Hurricane Katrina. She credits her late father, Rev. Dr. Charles F. Thomas former pastor at Fellowship Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, and mother, Mary R. Thomas Smith, a retired elementary school teacher, with giving her the confidence to succeed. Jennifer and three of her siblings graduated from J. O. Johnson H. S., and her late sister, Sonya Thomas Mayo, was also a graduate of Alabama A&M University.
After graduating from Howard University, Jennifer returned to Huntsville and began her career in broadcast journalism at WAAY TV (ABC affiliate) and WHNT TV (CBS affiliate), where she worked as an associate producer, talk show host, reporter and producer. Jennifer says although she currently lives in Washington, DC, Huntsville will always be home.
“My parents provided God-guided nurturing for me and my siblings when it came to our studies and to achieving success,” she says. “At Howard, my professors continued that expectation of excellence which is what I try to do with my students today.”
“This is where I spent my formative years and gained lifelong friends with whom I still keep in contact and visit today. Huntsville shaped me into the woman and professional/ professor I am today.”