Staff
Alan C. Miller, Executive Director
Alan C. Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is the founder and executive director of the News Literacy Project. He was a reporter with the Los Angeles Times for 21 years before leaving the paper in March 2008 to establish the project. He spent nearly 19 years in the paper’s Washington bureau, the last 14 as a charter member of its high-profile investigative team. His work prompted investigations by the Justice Department, Congress and inspector generals in federal agencies and led to congressional hearings, reforms and criminal convictions.
He received more than a dozen national reporting honors, including the George Polk Award, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal for breaking the 1996 Democratic National Committee campaign finance scandal. His series on the Marine Corps Harrier attack jet won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.
Before joining the Times, Alan worked at The Record of Hackensack, N.J., as a state and county political reporter and at The Times Union of Albany, N.Y. as a political and state investigative reporter.
He was a fellow with the Peter Jennings Project at the National Constitution Center in March 2008 and the Japan Society in 1998 and a student participant at the East‐West Center Communication Institute from 1976 to 1978. He has spoken at more than half a dozen colleges and universities and appeared on panels sponsored by the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the International Center for Journalists, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is a member of the advisory board of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., Alan received a Master’s degree in political science from the University of Hawaii. He lives in Bethesda, Md. with his wife, a public relations executive, and their daughter, a high school student.
Kate Ferrall, Program Coordinator
Kate Ferrall is the News Literacy Project’s program coordinator. A graduate of Oberlin College and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Kate began her career teaching at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. before moving to “The Kids on the Block,” an international program that uses puppets to educate young people about disabilities and social differences. After earning her master’s degree in journalism, she worked as a television news anchor, reporter and producer in Harrisonburg, Va. and as an educational television producer at NASA. She started her own production company and in recent years she has produced, written, and edited television programs for such clients as Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Animal Planet and National Geographic.
As program coordinator, Kate assists in managing the project website, building the online journalist directory and working with the curriculum developer. She also helps run the project in Montgomery County, Md.
Bob Jervis, Curriculum Developer
Bob Jervis, the former coordinator of social studies for the Anne Arundel County (Md.) Public Schools, is the News Literacy Project’s curriculum developer. Bob was responsible for developing the county schools’ social studies curriculum for kindergarten through 12th grade. After retiring in 2001, he spent five years with the Maryland State Department of Education assisting low- performing schools to improve student achievement.
Bob is currently teaching the social studies methods courses in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Goucher College in Baltimore and is working with the Council of Chief State School Officers to develop teaching units for online use. He has served as a consultant to the Delaware Department of Education; the Los Angeles Unified School District; the Colonial School District in Plymouth Meeting, Pa.; the Council of Chief State Schools Officers and the Goethe-Institut Washington/Transatlantic Outreach Program.
Bob has also collaborated with Jay McTighe in developing social studies materials incorporating the principles of Understanding by Design, into classroom instruction. Understanding by Design is an instructional planning model focusing on critical thinking skills and teaching the big ideas in each content area.
In his role with the News Literacy Project, Bob has taken the lead in developing original curriculum for both middle schools and high schools; determining the best way to present the material and maximize the impact of the journalists’ time in the classroom; incorporating state teaching standards into the curriculum; devising methods to assess the project’s impact on students; crafting a training process for teachers and journalists, and assisting in implementing, monitoring and evaluating the initial program in schools in New York City and Montgomery County, Md.
Melissa Nicolardi, New York Program Coordinator
Melissa Nicolardi, a former New York City public school teacher and a documentary filmmaker, is the project’s New York program coordinator. Melissa was a founding member of the School for Human Rights in Brooklyn, N.Y. She received a Master’s of Science in Teaching from Pace University as part of the New York City Teaching Fellows program and is a candidate for an M.F.A. in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College, concentrating in documentary production.
An alumna of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teachers Program, Melissa has presented at the U.S. Human Rights Network annual conference on the topic of media and human rights education and has been published in Amnesty International’s education newsletter. She is overseeing the News Literacy Project’s pilots at Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School in Brooklyn and the Facing History School in Manhattan and is working with the project’s after-school partner, Citizen Schools. “I am delighted to be a part of this innovative team that will help usher in a new generation of citizens wholly prepared to participate in the shaping of their world,” Melissa said.
Peter Adams, Chicago Program Manager
Peter Adams is the News Literacy Project’s program manager for the Chicago area. An alumnus of Teach for America, he has taught in the New York City and Chicago public school systems, as well as at Roosevelt University and Wright College. Peter has also worked with the New York City Teaching Fellows Program, with After School Matters and as an independent education consultant.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Indiana University at Bloomington, where he co-founded an independent monthly student newspaper. He received a Master of Arts degree in humanities from the University of Chicago.
As Chicago program manager, Peter will work with the Marquette School to pilot the News Literacy project in sixth-grade social studies classes and with principals, teachers and directors of after-school programs at Marquette and other schools to expand the project in 2010.