Bringing the War to the Classroom

Journalist Mike Boettcher reports and teaches from Iraq

Posted April 16, 2008; Updated June 24, 2008

UPDATE: Mike Boettcher and his son Carlos are leaving for Iraq the week of June 23. They will be deployed for 15 months, the same as most military personnel. Read the latest about this project from the Norman Transcript. When Boettcher starts blogging, the Web site will be NoIgnoring.com.

Boettcher has uploaded a YouTube video to the NoIgnoring site that details the project. See below.

Veteran CNN and NBC journalist Mike Boettcher and Gaylord College Dean and Edward L. Gaylord Chair Dr. Joe Foote will be teaching a groundbreaking class in fall 2008. Boettcher and his son Carlos will be embedded with troops in the Middle East and will be blogging and communicating live with students at OU via video conference. Dr. Zach Messitte, Vice Provost for International Programs and William J. Crowe Chair Professor of Geopolitics (also a former journalist at CNN) will join Boettcher and Foote in teaching the semester-long course.

The course will focus on War and Media and will be offered jointly by the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Department of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma. The class will feature weekly interactive dialogues with Boettcher (a Gaylord alum) who has embedded himself for a year in Iraq and Afghanistan. OU students will have exclusive access to Boettcher and have the opportunity to discuss with Boettcher his wartime odyssey. He will join the class each week by live videoconference. Boettcher will also be filling a Web site with special video and blogging reports about his time spent with the military.

Boettcher was interviewed by the Poynter Institute's Al Tompkins about the project at the National Association of Broadcasters annual conference in Las Vegas, April 15, 2008. Boettcher was also the subject of a feature article in his hometown newspaper, the Ponca City News on April 13.