One of the most prolific journalism advisers to come through JACC is Rich Cameron, who had dual long-term careers at West Valley College in Northern California and Cerritos College in Southern California. Earlier in his teaching career he taught part-time at Reedley and Merced colleges.
During his years in JACC he served as state president twice, executive secretary twice and online communications director. He also chaired three state conferences, including two important transitional ones where JACC moved from a hotel-based conference and moved to Fresno State for 10 years and again when JACC transitioned back to a hotel based convention in 2002. He devised and often taught the Blue Heron workshops that precede the annual Morro Bay Mid-Winter Faculty Conference.
Cameron considers himself an idea person and introduced many ideas to the operation of JACC and to California community college journalism. Some of his educational ideas even gained such popularity among advisers that they became standard policy. Later in his career he particularly relished in mentoring new advisers.
Often called "Mr. JACC" by those in JACC for all the work he did, some came to believe he probably started JACC, even though it had been in operation for nearly 25 years when he came along. Indeed, his master's thesis completed at Fresno State was a history of JACC’s first 25 years. Throughout the years he conducted periodic “snapshot surveys” that measured the state of California community college journalism. Results of those and other surveys are also available elsewhere on this site.
Cameron cajoled journalism faculty across the state in the late 1980s to get their first e-mail addresses and created a listserve that he liked to suggest created a virtual statewide journalism department --valuable because some many programs across the state are one-person departments. He also created and maintained JACC’s web site.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s he cajoled and facilitated the development of student online publications, often visiting other colleges to provide training to faculty and students at those colleges.
In the 2000s, he joined a small group of representatives from high school, university and industry associations to represent JACC and community colleges on the California Journalism Education Coalition and worked to improve communication among those different groups and attempt to unify journalism education across the levels.
Cameron was honored by the California Newspaper Publishers Association as the community college Outstanding Journalism Teacher of the Year in 1988. In 1990 he wrote a newsgathering simulation --CITY COUNCIL-- for use in newswriting classes and won a national educational award for it. He later converted it to web format and it continues to be used at colleges across the country. In 1997 he was inducted into the national Community College Journalism Association’s Hall of Fame for community college journalism teachers after having served as president of that organization.
And JACC honored Cameron in 2003 with a Lifetime Achievement Award and named its new “Volunteer of the Year” award after him.
