Returning to her alma mater, Kathleen McElroy has been hired as the director of Texas A&M University’s new journalism program.
Graduating from Texas A&M in 1981, McElroy received a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism as a part of the university’s original journalism program. Since ending the program in 2004, the university has offered more indirect paths for the subject such as a minor, and later a degree in university studies with a concentration in journalism.
Now under McElroy’s tenure, the first students in the new journalism program will start in the fall of 2023 and will be a part of the College of Arts and Sciences. McElroy says that her return to Texas A&M feels both unreal, yet natural.
“It’s kind of bizarre because everything feels familiar,” McElroy says. “There isn’t that feeling of being a stranger in a strange land. But at the same time, this is very different. It’s a very different A&M and it’s going to be a very different journalism program. I’m curious to see where this is going to take me.”
Before returning to Texas A&M as the new director, McElroy worked for The New York Times for 20 years, beginning in 1991, working in various positions, including editor. After receiving her doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014, McElroy became the director of the UT Moody College of Journalism serving from 2018 to 2022.
During her time in leadership at Texas A&M, Dr. McElroy plans to implement A&M’s core values into the growth of the new program.
“Anything you do takes collaboration and teamwork,” McElroy says. “Nothing happens on its own. You can try to give people the best information and you can try and get people on the same page, but there has to be a sense of team. That doesn’t mean everybody has to love everybody, but we need to share common goals, we need to understand why we’re all doing what we’re doing.”
As the journalism program continues to grow, McElroy has set expectations to help ensure the success of students.
“We need to have a curriculum in which [journalism] majors thrive and can get jobs either in newsrooms or communications, but are given the skills to do so,” McElroy says. “Also more collaborations on-campus and off-campus, and just giving and producing journalism that the community wants. I think it’s a collaboration — there's a way you can take the journalism that it produced here and just grow it.”
McElroy’s extensive experience in the field of journalism blossomed after her time at Texas A&M. You don’t always have to leave the state of Texas to have amazing opportunities, McElroy says.
“I’ve had some really great experiences and I’ve been really lucky to have those,” McElroy says. “You just have to know that you can be here in College Station and never have left the state of Texas and somehow end up at The New York Times, and in Europe and all of these other places, so just to know that you can have those experiences.”
