Posted by Philip Poole on 2012-09-05

By Drew Laing

Samford University's journalism and mass communication program will be featured in several events during homecoming weekend Oct. 12-13.

The department will highlight their past by honoring two more inductees to the department's Wall of Fame:  Wayne Atcheson and the late Timothy Robinson. The induction is at 11:15 a.m. Saturday in Bolding Studio.

The department also will be featured in the annual Live @ the Library event at 9 a.m. Saturday in Harwell G. Davis Library.

Atcheson graduated from Samford in 1964 and has spent time in various aspects of media and community relations. Currently, Atcheson serves as director of the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, N.C.

In 1983 Atcheson joined the University of Alabama athletic department as sports information director and went on to become associate director of the Tide Pride, which is the school's football and basketball donor program.

Atcheson also worked with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) as their associate director of programs. He has written several books including the history of the FCA, Impact for Christ: How the FCA Has Influenced the Sports World and Faith of the Crimson Tide.

Timothy Robinson graduated from Samford in 1965 at the young age of 19. He covered the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s for The Birmingham Post-Herald and United Press International. After his time in Birmingham, moved on to The Washington Post and was a significant part in the paper's coverage of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s.

In 1978, Robinson was named a Ford Foundation Fellow and then moved to New York in 1982 to be the editor-in-chief for the National Law Journal, America's largest-selling legal publication.

Robinson died in 2003 and Samford honors his memory with the department's annual Timothy Sumner Robinson Forum.

Theme of the Live @ the Library event is "The Crimson: When I was Editor…" and will feature a panel of former Crimson editors and their thoughts about issues and challenges they faced while running the student newspaper.

Dr. Jon Clemensen's documentary about the The Crimson in the 1970s will also be shown at the event. Clemmensen is on the journalism faculty and was newspaper sponsor for many years.

Live @ the Library and the JMC Wall of Fame inductions are just a small sample of the many exciting events that will highlight Samford's distinguished past at Homecoming 2012, according to David B. Goodwin, Samford's director of alumni programs. Several other departments and organizations are planning reunions and other events during the weekend.

A full Homecoming schedule and registration information is online.

Drew Laing is a senior journalism and mass communication major and a news and feature writer in Samford's Office of Marketing and Communication.

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Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 6,101 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.