Identity area
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Authorized form of name
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Description area
Dates of existence
History
Professor Emerita Mary Peterson Arnold was born in December 1947. While a student at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, she worked as a city desk reporter and women’s editor for the Mitchell Daily Republic. After earning a master’s degree in English from the University of South Dakota, she spent four years from 1973 to 1977 as a reporter for the Vermillion Plain Talk.
Arnold later taught high school journalism and served as a newspaper and yearbook adviser in Minnesota and Iowa. She joined the faculty of the University of Iowa in 1986, where she earned a doctorate in mass communications. At Iowa, she directed the Iowa High School Press Association and coordinated summer journalism workshops.
She subsequently served as a professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where she directed the American Society of Newspaper Editors High School Journalism Institute. From 1989 to 2004, Arnold served on the board of the Student Press Law Center, including a term as president.
From 1996 to 2001, Arnold worked in Washington, D.C., managing the Newspaper Association of America Foundation’s high school journalism and youth outreach programs. During this period, she helped establish a student newspaper and a youth editorial program. Afterward, she returned to Ball State University, where she taught journalism courses and directed a high school journalism workshop for two years.
Arnold also worked as a consultant and author for the Media Management Center at Northwestern University, where she wrote a series of four books focusing on women in senior management positions within news organizations.
In 2002, Arnold was hired by South Dakota State University as head of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication. She retired from the university in 2017.