Tyrone Shaw

Tyrone Shaw has been a reporter, a news director for a radio station, a managing editor in northwestern Vermont and a musician in a long-established rock-‘n’-roll band. But today his main focus is teaching students the value of community journalism. “I enjoy the students. I enjoy the interaction, which is never static and is always different. And I enjoy passing on what I’m passionate about, which is community journalism,” he says. “Our program is small, hands-on and very practical. Our students leave prepared to flourish in the newsroom.”

A lifelong fascination with the Iron Curtain prompted him to travel to Transylvania in 1988 for his 40th birthday. Since then, he has visited Romania, Moldova, Serbia, and Latvia as a guest journalism professor, photographer, and nonfiction book writer.

“It’s absolutely and totally fascinating to see the messy death and birth of political systems,” says the Fulbright senior specialist.

Professor Shaw grew up in the lower Hudson Valley but has family roots in Vermont; his great-grandparents emigrated from Lithuania and settled in Burlington. He lives on 22 acres in Bakersfield with his wife, Nancy, an artist and chef. He enjoys spending time with his family, skiing, hiking, music, old cars, cooking and eating good food with friends.