Florida Focus - Instructors
Frank Robertson
Position:
Instructor 
Emmy winning news anchor Frank Robertson brings 36 years of newsroom experience to the University of South Florida. For 21 years, he anchored the news at WTVT in Tampa. While on the anchor desk he reported extensively from the field including live coverage of the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, interviewed then President George H.W. Bush from the White House and traveled to Japan for a documentary on education. For his documentary, Robertson won the National Television Award from the National Education Writers Association. During his tenure, he was nominated for three Suncoast Regional Emmy Awards, winning one.
Prior to Tampa, Robertson co-anchored an hour-long news program called “Live at Five” at WSVN in Miami from 1986 to 1988. He was part of a team that won a UPI General News Award for their coverage of the casino gambling referendum in Florida.
From 1984 to 1986, Robertson anchored at KTVK in Phoenix, AZ where he was nominated for a Rocky Mountain Emmy Award for a special report on radical environmentalists. Robertson has also worked in Spartanburg, SC where he won the South Carolina Broadcasters Association Television News Award for a 5-part series on colon cancer, and in Richmond, VA, and Toledo, Ohio.
Robertson is a graduate of Ohio University.
He is a member of the USF Eric Pfeiffer Suncoast Alzheimer’s and Gerontology Center Development Board and also serves as a board member for Hillsborough Kids and the Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society. He is also actively involved with Clearwater’s Homeless Emergency Project, the March of Dimes and the Tampa Bay Academy of Hope.
Steve Mutimer
Position:
Instructor 
Steve Mutimer is a broadcast engineer and media lab manager for the USF Schoolof Mass Communications supervising all media lab personnel and video content produced by USF Mass Communications students. Mutimer designed and built the digital control room where the School’s most competitive “by invitation only” student newscast “Florida Focus” originates.
Mutimer provides senior undergraduate and graduate multimedia journalism students individual video work critiques and serves as the final quality control prior to student video reports are aired on WUSF-TV or published on WUSF’s website.
After graduating from USF in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Marketing, Mutimer started his professional career in cable. He directed both live and taped sports and entertainment programs throughout the 1980s and 1990s in Florida. During his career he’s also worked for small independent production companies as production manager overseeing all shots including freelance and regular staff.
Mutimer also worked at WEDU, the primary PBS affiliate in Tampa. There he edited a gardening show called “At Garden’s Gate,” which was distributed internationally. The show was shot on location and based out of Cypress Gardens. Mutimer also worked on a 5-year-long grant funded documentary program “Inventing Florida” editing the 90-minute documentary which still airs nationwide on various PBS affiliates.
After WEDU, Mutimer worked for Video Art Productions in Palm Harbor shooting and editing 30-minute programs covering sports. The shows focused on Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay Rays and were produced for Fox Sports and the Sunshine Network. He’s also freelanced for the Education Channel shooting and editing special programs featuring local artists called “Art off the Wall.”
Mutimer also serves as a judge for the Independents’ Film Festival in Tampa critiquing domestic and international entries in independent film, animation and documentary categories.
Clyde McCain
Position:
Instructor 
Clyde McCain was in broadcast television from 1969 to 2003 - 34 years non stop. He has been working with Florida Focus since around 1998. He currently also works with University of South Florida Engineering (APEX: Academic & Professional Engineering Excellence) as a production supervisor.
He also runs Media Production Design Group, Inc., with his partner Dr. Tom Terrell.
Neil Vicino
Position:
Instructor 
Neil Vicino is in his 23rd year as adjunct faculty in the School of Mass Communications. Vicino teaches Broadcast News and TV News and serves as news director for Florida Focus one semester a year when the course is assigned to him. He also developed the Multimedia Journalism course in 2001, which is now a popular selective course at the School of Mass Communications; the "by invitation only" class is taught in conjunction with Media General's Tampa properties The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV/Ch. 8 and Tampa Bay Online (TBO.com).
Vicino's broadcast experience includes working as a reporter, photographer, anchor, assignments manager and assistant news director at WTVT/Ch. 13 and WFLA/Ch. 8 in Tampa. He produced and hosted a news talk show for WUSF-TV for five years. Vicino also conducts regular media seminars for the public and private sectors.
Marie Curkan-Flanagan
Position:
Instructor 
Dr. Marie Curkan-Flanagan, an experienced broadcast journalist, is a faculty member of the School of Mass Communications. Before completing a doctorate at the University of Tennessee, Flanagan worked as a broadcast journalist for more than 27 years in cities such as Hartford, Boston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City and Las Vegas.
Her experience includes positions as news director, assistant news director and managing editor for the Gannett Corporation with responsibilities ranging from reporter to bureau chief for Capital Cities Communication. She also held a variety of broadcast positions for Triangle Publications.
In 1988 Flanagan was named news director for KOCO television in Oklahoma City. With this appointment, she became the first female news director for Gannett. Under her management, the news department received three consecutive Edward R. Murrow awards for best television newscast. In 1992 and 1993, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences also awarded the newsroom three Emmy Awards
In her seven years with the University of South Florida Flanagan; was the first telecom faculty member to use multimedia in the classroom, was honored with the prestigious Outstanding Media Teacher Award bestowed by the Board of Directors of Tampa Educational Cable Consortium, became an International Radio Television Foundation Fellow, and a Radio Television News Director Foundation Fellow for excellence in journalism. In 2004 Flanagan received the USF Alumni “Apple Polishing Award” as “outstanding faculty." In 2007, her electronic field production class received the Platinum "Best in Show" award from the Aurora International Film and Video Award, and an Aegis Video Production award for "Best Documentary" for a program celebrating USF's 50th anniversary.
Instructors from previous semesters
Liisa Hyvarinen Temple
Position:
Fall 2008 - Spring 2009 Instructor 
Liisa Hyvarinen Temple is an Emmy Award winning freelance journalist based in Tampa, Florida working in print, broadcast and online. She joined the School of Mass Communications adjunct faculty at the University of South Florida in 2002 where she teaches print, broadcast and multimedia courses. She has also served as Dart Fellow for Journalism and Trauma with the Dart Center at the University of Washington and in Rwanda, Africa. Hyvarinen Temple was also selected to serve as a Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center in Atlanta in 1999.
Hyvarinen Temple started her career as a magazine writer in San Francisco but has also worked extensively in television; her work has appeared on NBC, CNN, ABC and CBS. Her most recent print work has appeared in The Tampa Tribune, Marie Claire magazine, The Denver Post, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal Constitution and St Petersburg Times. Hyvarinen Temple’s previous investigative work on public safety issues earned her a regional Emmy Award in 1997 from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Her work has also been honored by such prestigious journalism organizations as the Associated Press and the Society of Professional Journalists. Hyvarinen Temple’s hour-long documentary titled “Silent Screams,” which focused on depression and suicide, was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2001 and was included in the archives of the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago in 2002. Her political coverage for WFLA-TV in 2004 won the prestigious Walter Cronkite Excellence in Broadcast Political Journalism award.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Hyvarinen Temple grew up in Helsinki, Finland but graduated Cum Laude with a B.A. in Communications from the University of San Francisco in 1991. She earned a Master’s Degree in Journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York in 1993.
Florida Focus was assigned to Hyvarinen Temple in August 2008. In addition to Florida Focus, she also teaches as needed the following courses: Magazine and Feature Writing, Beginning Reporting, Advanced Reporting and Public Affairs Reporting for the Print Sequence. On the broadcast side she teaches Broadcast News, TV News, Electronic Field Production (EFP) and Intro to Telecom as they are assigned to her. She also teaches 5000-level graduate courses in the multimedia track.
