On June 1, Rich Beckman will retire as the James L. Knight Distinguished Professor and Director of Visual Communication at the University of North Carolina and begin his tenure as the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism in the Knight Center for International Media in the School of Communication at the University of Miami.
His current area of teaching and writing is in the genre of multimedia design and production, although he began his career as a photojournalist and taught in that area for 20 years. As a multimedia producer, he has led teams that have won many of the most prestigious multimedia prizes in the world including a Pirelli INTERNETional Award for Educational Media, and multimedia storytelling awards from the Online News Association, the National Press Photographers Association, The Society for News Design, Horizon and the Pictures of the Year International competition. He also founded and hosts the semi-annual Multimedia Bootcamp Workshops.
Beckman has been at UNC-CH since 1978. During that time he served two terms on the Faculty Council; won the Tanner and David Brinkley awards, both in recognition of excellence in undergraduate teaching; was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in South Africa, Chile and Spain; and served as a charter member of the UNC-CH Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars and Carolina Speakers. He held the Julian Sheer Term Professorship given for overall excellence in teaching, research and service. He has twice been chairman of divisions within the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and earlier this year was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Southern Short Course in News Photography.
He also has a permanent faculty appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of the Andes in Santiago, Chile.
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