Sharon Lee Dunwoody

1947 - 2022

Dunwoody, Sharon Lee

MADISON - Sharon Lee Dunwoody, age 75, passed away peacefully and surrounded by family on Friday February 4, 2022, after a courageous battle with cancer.

Sharon was born on January 24, 1947 in Hamilton, Ohio, the daughter of Walter C. Dunwoody and Fanchon (Kapp) Dunwoody. She graduated from Marion, IN high school in 1965 and received bachelors and PhD degrees from Indiana University Bloomington and a Masters degree from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Sharon is survived by her life-partner, Steve Glass of Madison, sisters Pamela of Kalamazoo, MI and Lynn of Winter Haven, Florida, numerous nieces and nephews and grand nieces and grand nephews, and countless friends and colleagues from around the World.

Burial was at the Natural Path Sanctuary in Verona. A celebration of her life and career will be held in the spring.

Sharon Dunwoody was a gifted scholar, teacher and mentor. An inspiration to legions of students and colleagues, she was an exceptional role model for what others wanted to achieve during their careers.

Sharon's outstanding scholarly research has been invaluable to the fields of science, environmental, risk and mass communication. Even early in her career, she helped set standards of excellence for research quality. She was a prolific researcher who generously shared her expertise, working on projects with established U.S. and international scholars as well as graduate and undergraduate students. Scholars regularly wanted to work with her and many of them asked for her sage advice about research problems, funding issues and journal article commentary. She also was a source of advice for professional science and environmental journalists on ways to enhance their communication to the public.

Sharon produced an astounding number of publications, including books, book chapters, journal and magazine articles, reports and book reviews, and she gave hundreds of paper presentations at conferences. Among her publications were two co-edited books that are considered classics in the field, Scientists and Journalists: Reporting Science as News, and Communicating Uncertainty: Media Coverage of New and Controversial Science. In many ways, her work was foundational for other research efforts as it explored a wide variety of topics and research methodologies to address important issues. These included: scientist-journalist communication; mass media coverage of various scientific issues; uncertainty, complexity and information seeking, particularly related to risk communication; and information processing using the World Wide Web, to name only some of them.

Sharon helped to open up federal funding research opportunities and shape major science and environmental communication organizations with her active participation and her advice. Her scholarship helped generations of journalists, students and scientists become better translators of complex ideas to audiences all over the world. As one colleague said, "We would not even have a field known as science communication without the groundbreaking work of Sharon Dunwoody and her colleagues and students."

She held many senior offices in professional organizations and won numerous recognitions, including being elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research (MAPOR), the Society for Risk Analysis and the International Communication Association. She served twice as head of the AAAS section on General Interest in Science and Engineering. She was a former president of both MAPOR and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).

Sharon was the first woman to win the Paul J. Deutschmann Award for Excellence in Research from AEJMC. She was a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Brazil, a visiting journalism fellow at Deakin University in Australia and the Donnier Guest Professor at Stockholm University. She was a Distinguished Alumni Fellow at her alma mater, Indiana University. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sharon was the first woman director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, serving from 1998-2003, and later served as UW-Madison's Associate Dean for Graduate Education. In 2019, the Journalism School created the Sharon Dunwoody Early Career Award to honor outstanding PhD graduates of the school for their accomplishments in research and teaching.

More than all of her scholarly accomplishments, however, Sharon will be remembered for her engaging personality, wonderful sense of humor, kindness and gift for putting people at ease. She also had a deep concern for nature and preserving the environment. She was active in the Aldo Leopold Foundation and supported many environmental causes. She was an avid gardener with her partner Steve, and Madison neighbors often had the opportunity to obtain perennial plants they culled from their garden and house plants from their greenhouse. Sharon was also an enthusiastic birder, caring for birds in her own woodland garden and taking trips all over the world, with Steve and friends to see several thousand bird species.

Sharon was loved by her many friends, colleagues and former students. As one of her colleagues said, Sharon was such an awesome person -- taking everything in stride, always even-tempered and thoughtful. The word "awesome" is often overused, but it certainly applies to her. Sharon cultivated friendships that stayed intact throughout her life and worked to help everyone she knew achieve their potential.