, Assistant Professor/Radio-Television
Office phone: (406) 243-4143

Denise Dowling joined the broadcast faculty in 2000, after 20 years working in television and radio newsrooms. She teaches broadcast writing and reporting, producing, anchoring and television.

Dowling began her association with the University of Montana early in life. After her birth at St. Patrick Hospital, her parents took her directly to her first home in Married Student Housing. Dowling’s father was attending UM’s law school and working on the side at the food service. According to her mother, Dowling was fed lots of leftovers taken from the tables and run through the family blender. That may explain her aversion to mac and cheese and mystery meat.

A graduate of the UM School of Journalism, Dowling began her broadcast career while still a student. She ran the master control at KPAX while attending school full-time. One night early in her stint at KPAX she found the station was sending out no audio signal. The rest of the staff was attending a holiday party and those who could be located were in no condition to help her out. Dowling took a professional approach. She signed off the station, broke into tears and waited for sober help to arrive. That humble beginning paved the way for a long and interesting career.

Dowling went on to work at stations in Colorado Springs, Great Falls and Spokane, holding positions ranging from studio camera operator to director to executive producer and managing editor. She has earned several Emmy Awards for her work and was also honored with the Edward R. Murrow Award for coverage of the floods of 1996.

Since arriving at UM, Dowling has helped the school win a Broadcasters-In-Residence grant from the Knight Foundation, which brought television news professionals to campus for extended visits. She was instrumental in helping UM land a grant from the Kettering Foundation to produce local radio talk shows exploring national policy and its effects on citizens at the grass-roots level. Under her guidance, broadcast students have won numerous state, regional and national awards from the Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists, and the Broadcast Education Association. One of Dowling’s students won the national radio news competition in the Hearst Awards, leading UM’s Radio-Television Department to a rank of fifth in the nation.

Dowling is married to Chris Johnson, an attorney and also an alum of UM. They have two young children and are delighted to be raising them in the place they call home.