Amy Petersen Jensen appointed chair of Theatre and Media Arts

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Amy Petersen Jensen has replaced Roger Sorensen as chair of the Department of Theatre and Media Arts in the College of Fine Arts and Communications at BYU.

Sorensen was named Associate Dean of the college earlier this year.

Jensen is an associate professor in the department, and she also coordinates the undergraduate program in theatre and media arts and the media education master’s degree program.

As department chair, she plans to highlight the projects of the department.

“I want to work alongside the faculty of the department and help the university community understand the really great things we are doing,” Jensen said.

Jensen graduated from BYU in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in Theatre and Media Arts and in 1998 with a master’s in theatre and film. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Ph.D. in theatre history, criticism and theory.

A former public school teacher at American Fork and Lone Peak High Schools, Jensen has directed programs to benefit public schools. She directed the Hands on a Camera service-learning project. In this project, theatre and media education students work with in-service public school educators to train kids in media literacy and production skills by helping them make documentaries about their communities. The program has been operating for more than seven years.

“In Hands on a Camera, we help students take their knowledge of film and storytelling out into the community where they help young people tell their own stories through film,” said Erika Hill in an email. Hill runs Hands on a Camera and recently graduated from BYU’s master’s program. “This exchange is powerful for university students and young people alike, and I think the project really embodies the things that Amy always teaches in her classes — that education is at its best when we help our students transform their knowledge into meaningful practice.”

Jensen encouraged students to take advantage of everything BYU provides in discovering the meaning of lifelong learning.

“It is your responsibility to find ways to learn for the rest of your life,” Jensen said.

Jensen has won multiple awards during the course of her career including BYU’s Young Scholar Award in 2009, which acknowledges outstanding promise and contributions by new faculty. She also wrote and co-edited two books with other professors from BYU.

Jensen is vice president of the National Association for Media Literacy Education, co-editor of the Journal of Media Literacy Education and is on the editorial board of the Youth Theatre Journal.

Jensen is known for her dedication to her students.

“The thing that impresses me most about Amy is her genuine desire to help students turn the things that they learn in the university setting into practical tools that they can use to serve their communities,” Hill said.

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