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R. Neale Copple

R. Neale Copple (MSJ48) was a member of the inaugural class of the Medill Hall of Achievement in 1997.

Copple was a professor and dean at the University of Nebraska College of Journalism and Mass Communications. After serving in the Army Air Forces and flying bombing missions over Germany during World War II, Copple earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master’s from Medill with distinction. He was a copy editor for the Milwaukee Journal from 1949 to 1951 and city editor of the Lincoln Journal from 1951 to 1959, when he joined the full-time journalism faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was director of the journalism school from 1966 to 1979, and then took the title of dean when the school became an independent college, a position he held until 1990.

Copple served as national president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, chair of the Steering Committee of the Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program and a member of Medill’s first Board of Visitors (now called Board of Advisers), which held its inaugural meeting in November 1984. He was the author of “Tower on the Plains,” the centennial history of Lincoln, Nebraska, and “Depth Reporting,” an advanced writing textbook.

Copple died in 2003.