Jan Boyles
Jan Lauren Boyles currently serves as Associate Director and Associate Professor (with tenure) at Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication. She previously held appointments as Faculty Fellow for High Impact Practices within ISU’s Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost and as Director of Graduate Education within ISU’s Greenlee School. Boyles joined Iowa State from the Pew Research Center in Washington, and previously served as a Google Journalism Fellow. She recently completed a four-year elected term on the Board of Directors for her professional disciplinary association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. In this capacity, she acted as the head of the Council of Divisions, the governing body that organizes the Association’s annual conference for its 2,900 members. In 2023, she was named International Engagement Editor for Digital Journalism.
Her research centers on the intersections of news, data/code and civic technology. Her published works have been cited more than 1,100 times. She has also been named as the Top Reviewer for ICA’s Journalism Studies Division. Boyles has also received several industry fellowships. She was selected by AEJMC as a Scripps Howard Visiting Professor in Journalism, spending two weeks in residence at The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. She was also selected as a Big XII Faculty Fellow for research collaborations at the University of Kansas.
An award-winning instructor and academic advisor, Boyles has taught courses in media law, media ethics, big data & society, reporting, narrative journalism and news writing. At Iowa State, Boyles has received the Harry Heath Advising Award, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Award for Outstanding Early Achievement in Teaching and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Mentoring Award. While at West Virginia, she was honored as the inaugural recipient of the University’s Nicholas Evans Award for Academic Advising and the inaugural recipient of the School of Journalism’s Golden Quill Award for Teaching.
In service, Boyles has been an elected member of the Faculty Senate at both West Virginia and Iowa State Universities. She also has served on the College’s Strategic Planning team and Iowa State’s Governance Council, among other internal leadership committee appointments. At the national level, she was selected for the Scripps Howard Foundation Leadership Academy for aspiring deans and directors, which was hosted at Syracuse University. She also was chosen for AEJMC’s Institute for Diverse Leadership.
A native of Fairmont, W.Va., Boyles graduated summa cum laude with undergraduate and master’s degrees in journalism from West Virginia University. She is a member of the WVU Order of Augusta, the highest University-wide academic distinction bestowed annually to eight graduating seniors. She is also a former newspaper reporter for several publications in West Virginia. She received her PhD from American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C. Her dissertation encompassed a case study of the New Orleans news ecosystem post-Katrina.