As a little girl, Joy Pierce learned to love communication while helping Filipino children learn English and adapt to a new country.
From that experience in the third grade, Pierce knew she wanted to be a journalist and become involved with mass communication.
“This experience that I would call tutoring, combined with Superman and my falling in love with Lois Lane’s job, made me know I wanted to be a journalist,” said Pierce, a new professor in the U’s department of communication. “I wanted to gather information and disseminate it to people so they could make informed decisions.”
Since that childhood experience, Pierce has been involved in communication in one way or another, from her time working at a South Carolina newspaper to her new teaching job at the U.
Pierce left a teaching job at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas to come to the U.
Currently, Pierce teaches a course on how communication technology and culture collide and another class titled “Blogging as a Social Force.”
The blogging course focuses on the impact blogs have on the sharing of information, and it allows students to critically analyze the credibility of different blogs. Students in the class write different blog entries on topics such as the economy or public relations. Last semester students in Pierce’s class blogged about the crisis in Darfur. Just this week, students wrote about the growth of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, as a hot Middle Eastern tourist destination.
The communication technology and culture course addresses ever-changing forms of communication and people’s access to them.
Many Americans did not have access to radio or color television early on. Likewise, many Americans and people abroad do not have access to high-speed Internet or Internet at all, Pierce said.
Although computers might be physically available, some people do not have access to them because they are not literate, lack the money or are handicapped in some way. Race, class and gender also have an impact on people’s access to communication technology, Pierce said.
“(Pierce) brings a perspective that invites us to examine issues of race, class and gender in relationship to new media,” said Ann Darling, chair of the department of communication. “With her background in sociology, she can explore those questions.”
Pierce explored those issues with her dissertation in Illinois where she looked at the “digital divide.” She wanted to understand why the divide exists and what could be done to close that gap. During her time as a doctorate candidate, Pierce also taught at Rowan University, a small university in southern New Jersey.
Pierce said she valued the calm rural Illinois offered after completing her master’s degree in the hustle and bustle of metropolitan Los Angeles. Pierce recalls that most of her time as a graduate student was spent in small trailers because the notorious Northridge earthquake that hit two years earlier destroyed many buildings.
As part of her master’s degree, Pierce interviewed high school students to understand their perception of television news. In her research, she found out a large number of high-schoolers looked at news anchors and reporters in the same way they looked at teachers. If students watched television news at all, her research showed they took the information at face value without analyzing it critically.
Pierce graduated with an undergraduate degree in news editorial and minored in Spanish at the University of South Carolina.
During her schooling, Pierce worked for several South Carolina newspapers as a reporter, editorial assistant and news editor. Pierce at one point thought she would go to law school and become an attorney specializing in intellectual property law, but after working for a law firm she knew she wanted to stick with communication.
Exploring media and how people relate to it has taken Pierce to every region of the country, and she said she now has lived in all the U.S. time zones, except Alaska and Hawaii. As a child, Pierce also lived in different parts of the country because her father worked in the Navy. Now Pierce has finally settled down.
“I love Utah, I love the mountains, and it’s very dog-friendly,” Pierce said.
She has a 4-year-old bearded collie who is a retired dog show star. During the last couple of years, her dog has participated in a number of competitions. Besides her interests in communication and love for her dog, Pierce enjoys traveling, skiing, ballroom dancing, playing the cello, cooking and has recently been learning how to mountain bike.
“I didn’t think it was possible to get everything on your wish list and so to get the offer (to come to the U) was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up,” Pierce said. “The (communication) program is excellent here. I like that it integrates mass communication and speech communication, and even if this program were in the middle of nowhere, I would still have come.”
Pierce plans to stay in Salt Lake City, ski more often and continue taking turns shoveling snow with her neighbors.
“I enjoy my students,” Pierce said. “For the most part they’re hardworking and I feel pretty lucky. I’ve always been taught at state schools, and I really like the energy that comes from teaching at a public institution.”