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K-State Today

May 15, 2020

Gloria Freeland retires after 37 years as an A.Q. Miller School faculty member

Submitted by Susan Edgerley

Gloria Freeland, who taught for 37 years in the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications and served as director of the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media, retires at the end this semester, Saturday, May 16.

"Now, here I go," Freeland said, "zooming into retirement through the teleconferencing app we've all become so accustomed to."

Freeland graduated from K-State in 1975 with a journalism degree and earned a master's degree in business administration in 1983, the year she started working at K-State as the advertising director at Student Publications who also taught Reporting 1 and Advertising Sales.

Freeland taught courses in reporting, community journalism and advertising sales during her long teaching career. On her office bookcase, Freeland has framed and displays two of her student evaluations, one saying, "Gloria is my favorite professor at K-State;" the other, "This class blows!" They serve, she said, "as a reminder that you can't please everyone."

She has also coordinated internships for the A.Q, Miller School and has maintained relationships with advertising and public relations agencies, newspapers, radio and television stations and other constituencies across Kansas and the rural midwest.

Freeland was part of the task force that created the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media, whose mission is to serve and strengthen local media organizations and by extension, aid in the survival and revitalization of small towns and rural communities. She has served as its director since 1998, organizing 20 annual Huck Boyd lectures on topics pertaining to community media.

She coordinated centennial celebrations for the Collegian, for the A. Q. Miller School and for the Riley County Historical Society.

Freeland said that she never could have imagined she would finish her career at K-State telecommuting from home, but that "perhaps its been a gentle way of easing me out of a place that has been my home-away-from-home for so long."

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