COM Professors Earn Tenure

In 2020, CSUDH was ranked 72 in Best Regional Universities West by U.S. News & World Report, and number 12 for Best Undergraduate Teaching Programs. However, in 2019, the Bulletin reported that California State University, Dominguez Hills had the lowest number of tenure track faculty in the California State University system at 44.2 percent. At the same time, student enrollment at CSUDH hit an all-time high in the fall of 2019 with an estimated 17,027 students enrolled at the 347-acre college campus.

Luckily, the Communications Department at CSUDH is increasing its number of tenured faculty with two professors who went up for tenure this year, Assistant Professors of Communications Dr. Brant Burkey and Dr. Ryan Bowles Eagle.

Choosing members for a tenure track is decided during the hiring process and both Dr. Burkey and Dr. Eagle caught the eye of the department early on.

Dr. Eagle has been with the university for seven years, pushing her tenure off an extra year after giving birth to her daughter, and Dr. Burkey has been at Dominguez for the past six years, both are considered staples in the CSUDH Communications Department by students and staff alike.

"Dr. Burkey came in with extensive teaching experience," Dr. Nancy Cheever, Chair of the Communications Department, said, "[and] Dr. Eagle is the whole package, a teacher, great research agenda, proven service. They both seemed like a good fit for the department."

Dr. Cheever also had this to say about Dr. Burkey and Dr. Eagle earning tenure this year. "It's very positive," Dr. Cheever said, "it means we will have more tenured professors and be able to do more meaningful work for the department."

Being tenure track is a six- to seven-year-long process that puts professors under the microscope for their performance and contributions to the faculty, department, college, and university, which culminates in a tenure review that evaluates their service, teaching record, and research agenda.

For the first five years, candidates are expected to turn in review packets that are narratives showing they have progressed in these three areas, as well as show evidence they have published research in their field, improved in their teaching methods, and have taken part in services to the university through various committees or other activities.

Dr. Burkey has been here at CSUDH for the past six years, and has just finished his review year for tenure. Any student that has taken one of his classes knows his stories pretty well and is familiar with the infamous and facepalm-inducing bald jokes, as well as his signature leather briefcase and ever present coffee mug in hand.

But his path has not always been so clear.

After receiving his bachelor's degree from Sonoma State University, Dr. Burkey tried on a lot of hats as a journalist, serving as everything from religion editor to wine critic to calendar editor at weekly and daily newspapers, as an associate editor in educational publishing, and senior reporter in business, before getting his master's degree from the University of Oregon, his teaching credential at California State University, Long Beach, and working for nearly ten years as a high school history teacher and journalism advisor in Norwalk, Calif.

In addition to teaching high school by day, he also taught evenings at CSULB as an adjunct instructor in their journalism program. The experience taught him that he would fit better into a professor position and was encouraged to pursue a Ph.D.

So at 40 years old, he moved north and started over completely as a graduate student again.

Dr. Burkey received his Ph.D. in Media Studies with a Certificate in New Media & Culture from University of Oregon in 2014 and returned to Southern California to accept the tenure-track position at CSUDH. While he says it has been worth it, the entire process has taken him 10 years between his Ph.D. program and tenure track.

"It is grueling. It is really hard to stay so singularly focused for six long years trying to meet these various expectations after you've already gone through four years of graduate school working toward this singular goal. So I cannot overstate how important that is to me," Dr. Burkey said. "Not because of the idea of tenure, but because I set a goal for myself that took me ten years and to get to a point where you can almost taste it if I do achieve it...It's proving to myself that I can do something that I wasn't sure that I could accomplish."

During his time here, Dr. Burkey has published four articles in various academic publications, presented at numerous conferences, managed grants, and his most recent research project is an ongoing venture into social media surveillance. Dr. Burkey frontloaded himself in the beginning of his tenure with service to the university. In the past six years, he has sat on a variety of committees, was a founding member of the Untenured Faculty Organization, chaired a faculty grievance committee, moderated panels for World Press Freedom Day, was the keynote speaker for the Latinx Staff and Faculty Association fundraisers, assisted with the school newspaper, served on educational advisory boards, department search committees, and had a hand in rewriting the Journalism curriculum.

"I enjoy service a lot, it is an opportunity to get to know other professors in other disciplines and understand the inner workings of how the university operates," Burkey said.

But Dr. Burkey's true passion lies in the classroom, where he has the opportunity to share his passion.

"I am literally living my dream," Dr. Burkey said. "I get to be in the classroom with young minds and have the opportunity to talk about things that I am passionate about in the hopes that that passion will translate to students, to get them to question the way the media landscape works, to think critically, to make connections between the content we are talking about, to make it relevant to their lives. That is an amazing aspect of teaching, planting seeds and seeing them grow. There is no other career that provides those kinds of rewards."

Like Dr. Burkey, many people spend their lives searching for their passion, their niche, their place. Dr. Ryan Bowles Eagle also found hers in teaching.

"There was a part of me that was always drawn to being a teacher and being able to talk to a group of people about things that I am interested in and being able to share that love with other people," Dr. Eagle said.

Dr. Eagle is in the seventh year of her tenure track and is the most recent recipient of the CSUDH 2020 Lyle E. Gibson Award for Excellence in Teaching and Education.

Dr. Eagle has a reputation as a gifted and involved professor who listens and provides empathy, understanding, and guidance to each of her students.

"She's very intuitive… She would pull me to the side and ask me if I was okay," Journalism senior Robin Bolton said. "She is very encouraging and very nurturing. She goes out of her way to encourage you. She goes out of her way to make sure you understand [the concept]."

Dr. Eagle teaches courses in Media and Representation, Genre Analysis, and Media Industries but her heart lies in teaching about documentaries.

"There is a real perception that documentaries can only be one thing and in class, we watch so many different types of documentaries and we see how storytellers choose categories. [It is] more diverse than they imagined," Dr. Eagle said.

Before becoming a professor, Dr. Eagle worked in the media industry with independent documentaries. Her research has been published in various feminist publications and her favorite article centers on the Hague and human rights. Dr. Eagle's background in documentaries, her studies, and her research all highlight her prominent belief in having each story and voice be heard in her classroom.

Dr. Eagle's passion for teaching and for the university at CSUDH shows in her work. She is one of the founders of Hollywood by the Horns, which helps CSUDH students gain contacts in film making, she has sat on six committees and helped to design the curriculum for the Film, Television, and Media Studies (FTVM) program.

"Being able to spearhead the media studies option into the FTVM program," Eagle said, "designing and developing a curriculum that would help serve our students well, and would set them up to pursue things they love, it is rare to have that much of an impact on the curriculum that you teach. That was exciting and I got to do something that was really going to last beyond my time at the university."

Dr. Burkey and Dr. Eagle both earned tenure and promotion at the end of Spring 2020 and will be starting this fall as Associate Professors in the Communications Department.