Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, the professor who created Columbia Votes and brought solutions journalism to the college’s curriculum, is leaving to join the Solutions Journalism Network as its new program manager for training and curriculum.
Bloyd-Peshkin, a professor in the School of Communication and Culture, said her decision to leave was unrelated to the college’s recent faculty layoffs. The college has laid off 43 full-time faculty since the start of the year, reducing the faculty by about 20%.
“I have this deep history with the Solutions Journalism Network,” she told the Chronicle. “When this position opened, it just seemed like such a great opportunity.”
Bloyd-Peshkin joined Columbia in 2002 as an assistant professor in the former Journalism Department. In addition to leading the journalism magazine concentration, she helped launch Columbia Votes — an initiative aimed at increasing student civic engagement — and introduced solutions journalism courses to the college. She also taught three CCCX courses during her time at Columbia, one at each level.
One of them, the 100-level “Big Chicago,” was infused with solutions journalism even though it wasn’t a journalism course. The course, called “City of the Big Solvers,” taught students about the city through the lens of initiatives making the city a better place for all its inhabitants.
She was slated to teach this fall but worked with the college to find replacements for her courses.
The future of Columbia Votes, however, remains uncertain.
Columbia Votes invites students to the electoral process by helping students register to vote and ensuring students are informed about current information for candidates and issues. No one is set to head the campus group, and Bloyd-Peshkin said this is something that concerns her.
“Someone needs to take this on as a faculty or staff champion,” she said. “Somebody who wants to really collaborate with students to create something that’s very peer-to-peer and isn’t just about voter registration, because voter registration is not our challenge here. It’s voter engagement. It’s civic engagement.”
Bloyd-Peshkin is writing a “playbook” for how Columbia Votes has been run to provide a basis for someone to build on, including the work done with internal and external collaborators.
“I really don’t want my departure to be disruptive,” she said.
Bloyd-Peshkin told the Chronicle she has trained two to three dozen undergraduate voter geniuses. Of them, there are three geniuses currently who can do “a lot of the work” and also help train the new faculty or staff leader who steps into her position, she said.
Eryn Young, a senior marketing major, said her time with Bloyd-Peshkin in Columbia Votes “gave us the freedom to really blossom into leaders.”
“Sharon was a really amazing supervisor for all of us who work at Columbia Votes,” Young said. “Her openness to feedback and also ability to open the floor and make us feel comfortable enough to ask questions is what I truly believe made Columbia Votes great.”
Teddi Karnes, a senior film and television major and the longest-serving voter genius, credited Bloyd-Peshkin for fostering student leadership.
“I’m so sad to see her go, and I’m not sure what we’re going to do without her,” Karnes said. “All my work now is just going to be me asking, ‘What would Sharon do?’”
Betsy Edgerton, associate professor in the School of Communication and Culture, said the mentoring she gave students in Columbia Votes was “life-changing for them.”
For years, Edgerton and Bloyd-Peshkin worked side by side, collaborating on classes, faculty initiatives and student programs.
“For decades, we’ve told students that we share one brain, and it’s true,” Edgerton said. “Sharon is the queen of providing solutions, not problems, and the most diplomatic and eloquent person I know—which are handy skills during a faculty meeting. Our colleagues across the college and our students will miss her deeply, and so will I.”
In its official announcement about her appointment, the Solutions Journalism Network noted that Bloyd-Peshkin had long been in their orbit.
“She developed a solutions journalism unit as part of a yearlong journalism curriculum for New York City public schools, and she has made numerous presentations about solutions journalism at high-school conferences,” according to the announcement, published on Medium. “Sharon has trained newsrooms to practice solutions journalism and co-led a train-the-trainers program for SJN.”
Bloyd-Peshkin said the Solutions Journalism Network offers a unique opportunity.
“I have this opportunity to do something that is like, if I could invent a job for myself, this would be it,” she said. “It takes what I’ve done here and puts it on a national and international stage. It allows me to innovate in a whole new space that’s going to have a big impact on a lot more people.”
Copy edited by Vanessa Orozco