Teacher of the Year 2005-2006
Name: Mike Foley
Department: Department of Journalism
College: College of Journalism and Communications
Rank: Master Lecturer
Years at UF: 4
Activities that led to award:
Mike Foley is a veteran newspaper editor and executive now on the faculty of the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
After nearly 30 years with the Times Publishing Co., which publishes the St. Petersburg Times, the largest newspaper in Florida, he joined the faculty in August 2003 as a Master Lecturer in the journalism department. Foley’s classes focus on news reporting and writing.
He was appointed the first Hugh Cunningham Professor in Journalism Excellence in May 2006 and was honored as UF’s Teacher of the Year for 2006-07.
He served as executive editor, managing editor, metropolitan editor and city editor of the Times. He also worked on the business side of the paper as vice president of Community Relations. He oversaw community relations, the Times grants and scholarship programs and served as company spokesman.
He started his journalism career in 1970 as a reporter for the Evening Independent, a now-closed afternoon newspaper owned by the Times. He moved to the Times in 1974 and remained there until retirement in 1999.
He has been involved in a wide variety of industry and community service, including serving as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes, president of the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, judge for the Hearst Foundation College Writing Awards and as a trustee of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Florida.
He earned a bachelor’s degree (with honors) from the University of Florida in 1970 and received his master’s in mass communication from UF in 2004. He was selected as a Distinguished Alumnus of the College of Journalism and Communications in 1994. He has served on the college’s advisory council. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration in 1991 by Tampa College.
Foley is 61 (though he looks much younger), and is married to the former Suzette Jennings. He has two daughters: Shannon, of Los Angeles, and Corey, of Minneapolis, and a stepson, Skyler Weaver, of St. Petersburg.
He plays bass guitar in Suzette Jennings and Moodswingz, a band that plays jazz, Motown and R&B.
