Cate Terwilliger

Associate Professor
M.A.,University of Michigan
cterwill@nmu.edu

Teaching Specialties

• Journalism
• First Amendment

Cate Terwilliger joined the English Department in Fall 2004 after 20 years as a print journalist, including staff positions with The Associated Press and The Denver Post. She was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing, and shares in the 2000 Pulitzer Prize awarded The Denver Post for its coverage of the Columbine High School shootings. Cate also worked as a reporter and editor at The Colorado Springs (Colo.) Gazette and The Colorado Springs Independent, where her work won numerous awards. Cate’s writing also is included in the textbook The Civil Mind (Thomson Wadsworth, 2007) and the anthology, Women Runners: Stories of Transformation (Breakaway Books, 2001). Her freelance articles have appeared in regional and national magazines; additionally, she is the author of numerous technical reports.

During her tenure at Northern, Cate has focused on First Amendment scholarship, developing a special topics course in First Amendment Freedoms and an associated all-campus event, First Amendment Day.  She is currently developing a specialty in multimedia journalism, including digital photography, audio and video recording.  She teaches a variety of journalism classes, including beginning and advanced news writing, copy-editing and page design, feature writing, and practicum. The latter dovetails with Cate’s rotating role as faculty adviser to The North Wind, Northern’s student newspaper, whose student staff nominated her as Adviser of the Year in 2006. Additionally, Cate teaches Good Books and, occasionally,  technical writing. She has presented at academic and professional conferences on a variety of topics, including diversity, working with the media and creating complex story forms.

Cate holds a master's degree in journalism from the University of Michigan and a bachelor's degree in animal science from the University of Minnesota, where she also completed two years of doctoral study.