We hope you enjoy this series where we meet and get to know employees from across campus. Would you like to be featured? Contact us at campusnews@csufresno.edu.

Name: Jim Boren
Title: Executive director, Institute for Media and Public Trust; adjunct faculty
Department: Media, Communications and Journalism
Academic Degrees: Bachelor's degree, Fresno State

How long have you worked at Fresno State? Three and a half years following my retirement from The Fresno Bee.

What is your most notable accomplishment in your field, and why was it important? I'm proud of the media work we are doing at Fresno State, from creating the Media Institute, being a leader on media literacy in California and establishing our students of color journalism training program that has a goal of diversifying Fresno-area newsrooms.

What are you most passionate about in your field and why? Our goal is to give news consumers the tools to determine whether content they are consuming on social media is accurate. We don't want to tell them what to think, but we hope we all can agree on basic facts on which people take their own individual opinions.

What is a memorable moment you had at your job? As a journalist, serving on the juries of the Pulitzer Prizes in 2016 and 2017 at Columbia University.

What is a memorable moment you had in class, and what does that reveal about your teaching style? When my writing students realize that they can become good writers, and they create content that they are proud to share with the world. Every student can be a strong writer if they work at it.

What do you like to do for fun in your spare time? Play golf and travel.

What is something interesting about you that most people don’t know? I was a single parent raising a daughter, who was only 20 months old when her mother, and my wife, died from a disease.