CHARLES BIERBAUER
DEAN

Charles Bierbauer became the first dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies when it was created in 2002. He came to the University of South Carolina after an award-winning, globe-trotting journalism career.

From 1981-2001, Bierbauer was a correspondent for CNN in Washington. For nine years, he covered the Reagan and Bush administrations as CNN’s senior White House correspondent. He joined CNN as its Pentagon correspondent, covered five presidential campaigns from 1984-2000, and spent five terms as the network’s Supreme Court correspondent.

Much as the college now spans the continuum from information seeking to multimedia communication, Bierbauer’s career also has covered a broad range of media experience. 

As early as his college days, he was a newsman for WKAP radio in Allentown, Pa., and a part-time reporter for his hometown newspaper, The (Allentown) Morning Call. He was a wire service reporter with the Associated Press in Pittsburgh from 1967-68 and a correspondent in Bonn, Germany, for the Chicago Daily News.  

In all, Bierbauer has lived in seven other countries and reported from scores. From 1977-81, he was an overseas correspondent for ABC News, first as Moscow Bureau Chief and later as the Bonn Bureau chief. Prior to that, he worked in Vienna, Bonn, London and Philadelphia for Westinghouse Broadcasting.  He was a free-lance reporter in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1968-69 while on an Edward R. Murrow Fellowship.

In 2001, Bierbauer was reporter and producer for a Discovery Channel documentary on the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks.  

In 1997, he won an Emmy for anchoring CNN coverage of the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. He also is a recipient of the ACE Award from the Association for Cable Excellence and the Overseas Press Club Award for reporting of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  

In 2006, USC's Mortar Board honor society awarded Bierbauer its Excellence in Teaching Award. He was nominated for the award by a student in his Media and Government class.

Bierbauer is a graduate of Penn State, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Russian as well as bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism. Penn State has honored him as a distinguished alumnus and alumni fellow.

He remained involved with Penn State as a lecturer in its Washington studies program, on the College of Communications Board of Visitors and as a member of the alumni association's Communications Advisory Board. 

He served as a member of the national Council for Media & Public Affairs at George Washington University and is on the advisory board for the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism.  

Dean Bierbauer is married to Susanne Schafer, formerly the Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press. He has four children and six grandchildren.

Charles Bierbauer

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