Title
Professor Emeritus of Communication and JournalismOffice Building
Yeager HallOffice
211Mailing Address
Yeager Hall 211School of Communication & Journalism-Box 2235
University Station
Brookings, SD 57007
Biography
At SDSU, Olson has taught more than 15 classes (developing six) from the 100 to 700 level. His favorite classes are MCOM Fundamentals for freshmen and Introduction to the MMC for graduate students, along with Health Journalism and International Media. He has advised nearly 50 master’s projects and theses.Olson received the national Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Scholastic Journalism Division’s (SJD) Educator of the Year Award. He also received SDSU’s award for teaching excellence, the inaugural Outstanding Online Educator Award, and Graduate School's Excellence in Mentoring Award.
He first taught online in 1999 and has since taught 10 online classes. He helped develop an online master’s degree program, which received accreditation in May 2013, one of the first online JMC programs to do so. He holds SDSU’s master level online teaching certification.
Olson’s research interests include international media, scholastic journalism, and teaching writing; he received three SJD top faculty paper awards.
Prior to SDSU, he taught at Oklahoma Wesleyan. He also taught a semester at Yunnan Normal University in Kunming, China.
Olson, who has newspaper and public relations experience, holds the following degrees: A.A., liberal arts, Oklahoma Wesleyan; B.S., journalism, South Dakota State; M.A., journalism, University of Oklahoma; Ed.D., higher education and English, Oklahoma State.
Department(s)
Image for School of Communication and Journalism
School of Communication and Journalism
Image for College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences