Biography
Kim Pearson is a professor of journalism and professional writing at The College of New Jersey. Her work focuses on broadening participation in computational journalism and building civic media platforms. Her research has attracted support from Microsoft Research, the National Science Foundation and the New Jersey Council of the Humanities. In 2000, she was selected as New Jersey Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support for Education.
Pearson received her primary and secondary education in the public schools of Camden, New Jersey and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As an educator and individual, she was profoundly influenced by the example of her father, Jesse W. Pearson, Sr. She received her AB in Politics from Princeton University, and her MA in Journalism from New York University.
Before coming full-time to TCNJ in 1990, she was a science writer – first for the Fox Chase Cancer Center and then for AT&T. At Fox Chase, she was a lay counselor for the Cancer Information Service and the writer and editor of newsletters for allied health professionals. In that capacity, she reported on a range of topical issues and covered such notable researchers as Linus Pauling, Alfred Knudson, and Nobel Prize winner Baruch Blumberg. At AT&T, she was among those responsible for explaining the underlying science and practical applications of technologies we now take for granted, such as mobile telephony, high speed data networks, and holography. She reported on the work of such scientific luminaries as Nobel laureates Arno Penzias and Bob Wilson, Unix inventors Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie, mathematician William Massey and National Technology medalists James West and Walter Lincoln Hawkins, among others.
Her magazine journalism has appeared in Black Enterprise, Emerge, and the Quarterly Black Review of Books, among other outlets.
At TCNJ, Pearson has taught a broad range of courses in the Journalism, Professional Writing, African American Studies, Interactive Multimedia and Liberal Learning programs. She co-founded TCNJ’s Interactive Multimedia major, along with Ursula Wolz and Phillip Sanders. From 2011-14, she chaired the Department of African American Studies. She is TCNJ’s representative to the board of directors of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.
Pearson is a member of the Online News Association, member of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, the Society of Environmental Journalists and an associate member of the National Association of Black Journalists. She is also a life member of both the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and the Alumnae Association of the Philadelphia High School for Girls, a board member of the Princeton Class of 1978 Foundation and a volunteer at Arch Street Presbyterian Church.
Media credit: Interviewing former Rep. Dennis Kucinich at a 2007 Democratic Presidential candidates forum at Howard University. Photo credit: Laurie White. Used with permission
About Kim Pearson by Kim Pearson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.