Willis C. Tucker

Willis C. Tucker came to the university in 1947. He established the Journalism Department and oversaw its transition to a School of Journalism in 1957. He headed the department/school from 1947 to 1972. He established the Tennessee High School Press Association in 1948 to provide a link between the department and high schools and initiated the annual summer High School Journalism Institute on campus.     Together with John Lain, a journalism professor, he established an Industrial Editing Institute to encourage improvement of writing and editing in-house organs for businesses and industries and played a major role in establishing the UT-Tennessee Press Association Annual Press Institute in 1952. He was instrumental in establishing the UT-Tennessee Press Association Newspaper Hall of Fame, into which he was inducted in 2007. Under his guidance, a student chapter of Sigma Delta Chi, later the Society of Professional Journalists, was established in the School of Journalism. He also sponsored the establishment of a chapter of Kappa Tau Alpha, the national collegiate journalism honor society. He was responsible for the School of Journalism being accredited by the American Council on Education in Journalism in 1955. For more than 20 years, he headed the university’s Publication Board. He held the bachelor’s degree from West Virginia Tech and a master’s from West Virginia University. He also studied at USC and Ohio State University.