Ex-Annenberg dean died Friday

Former Annenberg School for Communication Assistant Dean Phyllis Kaniss died Friday from cancer-related complications, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. She was 59.

After her tenure as assistant dean, Kaniss continued teaching courses at Annenberg on topics including media and urban policy.

In 1999, Kaniss created the Student Voices Project, an Annenberg Public Policy Center initiative that promotes civic engagement among high-school students. The program brings government and policy issues to students and has since expanded to numerous school districts across the country, proving to be a “very successful program,” according to Annenberg Public Policy Center director Kathleen Hall Jamieson.

“Very few people create a major intervention of some sort that continues and thrives — and she did,” Jamieson said.

Kaniss' son, Josh Wheeling — who is currently pursuing a Master of Public Administration at the Fels Institute of Government — explained that she “covered media’s coverage” of political campaigns, a topic that she brought to the Student Voices Project and her courses at Penn. In her classes, he added, Kaniss would have students select a news source and follow it throughout a local political race, analyzing how they cover campaigns.

“She loved her students, and to be able to help people and point them in the right direction,” Wheeling said.

Former Daily Pennsylvanian Senior Sports Editor Matthew Conrad took Kaniss' course as an undergraduate at Penn in 2007. After analyzing how media "affected or was affected by events relating to the candidates" in the mayoral election that year, he noted that Kaniss was "one of the foremost experts in studying the interaction between media and politics, and it was a really amazing opportunity to learn from her experience."

"[She] was one of the most dedicated, caring professors I had at Penn, and the entire University benefited from her devotion to her students," Conrad wrote in an e-mail.

She earned her bachelor's degree from Penn in 1972 and went on to study at Cornell University, where she received a doctorate in regional science. During her time at Penn, Kaniss served as a staff writer for The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Wheeling said Kaniss was passionate about journalism from her days as an undergraduate student.

Working at the DP “gave [Kaniss] a love for journalism and showed her the importance of it,” Wheeling said. This love, he noted, remained with her throughout her career as a media critic and teacher.

Wheeling himself served on the 122nd board of the DP as a sports editor. He emphasized that his mother supported him from his undergraduate days at Penn through a sports journalism career and into his graduate education at Fels.

“I have learned so much … from her,” he said. “She gave me a passion for [journalism].”

Kaniss wrote two books covering local news and the 1992 Philadelphia mayoral race. She also served as executive director of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Brenda Curtis, associate director of the Leonore Annenberg Institute — which houses Student Voices — wrote in an e-mail that she first met Kaniss while helping on the Student Voices mayoral project in 1999.

"Dr. Kaniss left an imprint here at Student Voices and civic education at the Annenberg Public Policy Center," Curtis wrote. "She demonstrated how to engage students by creating a place for them to dialog on current events, politics, and the institutes of democracy."

According to Curtis, Kaniss gave students "the keys to active citizenship" by helping them learn to discuss local government.

She was "a true scholar — one that applied her research to make a difference in so many of our lives," Curtis added. "We will all miss her here at Student Voices but her voice will live on in our work with students."

The funeral will be held on Dec. 23 at Goldstein's Funeral Home, located at 6410 N. Broad St. The service will begin at 1 p.m., with the family receiving condolences at 12 p.m., according to a news release by Annenberg. A memorial service will also be held at Penn in the spring.

City News Editor-elect Victor Gamez contributed reporting to this article. Any person wishing to contribute comments or additional information should e-mail Daily Pennsylvanian Managing Editor-elect Unnati Dass at dass@theDP.com.

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