School of Journalism director Geneva Overholser announced that professor Bill Celis (pictured, above left) and assistant director Laura Castañeda (below right) will be the associate directors of the School of Journalism, effective August of 2011.

They will replace associate director Pat Dean, who announced she will be stepping down after being in her position since 2003. Dean will continue in her role until August while Castañeda and Celis transition into their new roles.

"We're terribly excited that Laura and Bill are taking on a bigger leadership role at the school," Overholser said. "It's a challenge to replace Pat, who knows the school so well. But Bill's and Laura's skills, knowledge and dedication to journalism are tremendous. I am very much looking forward to working with them."

Celis, an award-winning teacher and author, is a former education correspondent for The New York Times and a former reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. His work on education and school reform policy over two decades has appeared in the American Prospect magazine, The Boston Sunday Globe, The New York Times Week in Review, Teacher magazine, Columbia University’s Teachers College Record and Voices in Urban Education, a quarterly produced by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, and a number of other general-interest publications. 

Castañeda, also the director for distance learning at USC Annenberg, has been a staff writer, editor and columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, and The Associated Press in San Francisco, New York and Mexico. Her freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, BusinessWeek Online, Hispanic Business, Latina, Online Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review and American Journalism Review magazines, among others. She is the co-editor of "News and Sexuality: Media Portraits of Diversity," which was published by Sage Publications in October 2005.

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