Dr. Jefferis, formerly Dr. Bonnie Clark, is in her 38th year as a professor at the Clearwater Campus where she teaches Intro to Speech Communication, Intro to Mass Communication, and Writing for the Mass Media. She has also taught Mass Media and Popular Culture, Public Speaking, and College Success Skills.

PROFESSIONAL and ACADEMIC BACKGROUND:

Before joining SPC, she was the Director of Communications at the Defiance College.  She managed the Communication Office which included an assistant director who led the design and branding of print materials for the admissions and alumni departments, and a Sports Information Director who handled the communication/media needs of the athletic teams.  She ran a news bureau designed to get DC news into local newspapers and other media, and she produced television features for DCTV: Defiance Community Television, the local access cable television station.

At the University of Florida, she had a split position where she was the News Director of WRUF-AM and WRUF-FM with a staff of 50 students and one professional sports director, and she taught classes as Assistant Professor of Broadcasting.

She was a graduate assistant in WBGU-FM and WFAL-AM while at Bowling Green State University, and taught Radio-TV-Film courses under the direction of Dr. R.K. Clark (no relation).

At The Defiance College, she was the director of the student radio station WDCW, and assisted the instructor for the Radio-TV-One and Radio-TV-Two courses.

Dr. Jefferis hosted her own live daily country music show on radio for four years, and for one year, she was the afternoon drive on-air disc jockey for the soft rock station..  She worked at WBNO-FM and WQCT-AM in Bryan, Ohio, for a total of 10 years, with experience in news, program directing, music directing, sales, sports, advertising, public relations, and production.

Dr. Jefferis holds the Ph.D. in Communication Education (University of South Florida), her M.A. is in Speech/Radio-Television-Film (Bowling Green University), and her B.S. and A.A degrees are in Communication Arts (The Defiance College).  She has done post-Ph.D.-graduate work in Journalism (USF-St. Pete/Bayboro) and Speech Communication (West Texas A&M University).

ENGAGEMENT in the SPC STUDENT COMMUNITY:

From 1999 to 2009, she was the Mass Communication Intern Advisor and her students worked in all kinds of Tampa Bay media outlets including WFTS, WTSP, WTVT, and WFLA TV, Bay News 9, Cox Radio, Clear Channel and iHeart Radio, WEDU public TV, WMNF public radio, and the St. Petersburg-Clearwater Convention and Visitors Bureau's Media Services division and Film Commission.  Three of her students did summer internships in New York City.  

When she was first hired by SPC, Dr. Jefferis became the Director of Forensics and coached the speech and debate team which won second in the nation in the small entry division two years in a row at the National Forensics Association national tournaments.  One of her former students, Andy Wood, won the national championship in Persuasion and was awarded the Pentathlon Award for Top Speaker at the NFA national tournament, and he won the national championship at the Interstate Oratorical Association tournament. 

Dr. Jefferis also served as the co-advisor to the Future Teachers of America club, and she was the faculty advisor to the Juggling Club.  She was a faculty initiate into the Phi Kappa Theta honor society for her work judging their contests and supporting the club's events on the Clearwater Campus.  She has always been an annual donor to the Women on the Way program at the Clearwater Campus, and in 2018, she also donated to WOW-Tarpon Springs, WOW-Seminole, and the Clothing Drive for the Homeless Empowerment Program at the St. Pete/Gibbs Campus.

ENGAGEMENT in the SPC FACULTY COMMUNITY:

She had a seat on the Executive Board for the all-college Academic Integrity Council from its start in 2017 through 2023.  The committee revised the Academic Integrity process, then moved it through all the appropriate levels of approval, then developed the training programs and presented the trainings for academic chairs (November 2018), adjuncts (January 2019), full-time facilitators (January 2019).  The committee presented a training session for full-time faculty in April 2019 as part of the CETL conference. She has been a faculty representative at hearings, and she has served as a facilitator.

She directed faculty colleagues in a short play about the fight for the women's right to vote (19th Amendment) that was produced at a big fundraiser luncheon in January 2019, and total of four other times on campus and in the community in 2011-2012.

Since its beginning, Dr. Jefferis has been a strong supporter of the One Book One College initiative, now called SPC Reads.  For 10 years, she was on the college-wide committee to select the book(s) and she was on the Clearwater campus committee to publicize and host the programs.  

For three years, she was on the Clearwater Campus AAUW steering committee which arranges all-campus programs.  In spring 2018, she coordinated a panel of presentations called Female Role Models in Fiction for Women's History Month. She and Dean Susan Demers did a joint presentation on Stephanie Plum and Kinsey Millhone, who were created by Janet Evanovich and Sue Grafton.

Dr. Jefferis was the original chair, and co-chair its last year, of the 2010-2015 planning committee for the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the SPC Clearwater Campus in fall 2015.  

She won a grant from the Center of Teaching and Learning in 2012 and coordinated a panel of presentations called "We are what we eat, but what are we eating?  A multi-disciplinary presentation about the food on your plate."  The areas represented were public policy & legal studies, math, economics, business, vet tech, ethics, and communication.

She also coordinated a panel of presentations called "Success and Obligation:  Whose Dream is it Anyway?" for African American History Month in February 2010.

SPC FACULTY GOVERNANCE ORGANIZATIONS (FGO):

She participated in the Clearwater Campus Faculty Governance Organization and served on the Executive Board as Parliamentarian from 2012 - 2021. 

She was elected to be one of the Faculty Senators from the Clearwater Campus from the fall of 2012 to the fall of 2017, and she was elected to serve as Faculty Senate Secretary starting in January 2013 to August 2017.  She was elected as Secretary again for 2019-20 and 2020-21.

In 2011-2013, she chaired the Faculty Senate's Constitution Wording Review Committee.  The amendments were approved by Senate in March 2013, but the all-SPC vote did not reach the minimum limit of 2/3 of all faculty.  In 2018, she worked with Senate leadership to review the previous changes, and add new changes.  The amendments were presented to the Senate in February 2019, and the Senate vote was taken in March 2019.  The Constitutional Amendments package was passed by the full faculty in the fall of 2019.    

AWARDS:

She has won several national and local awards for teaching.  In August 2024, she received the title of Professor Emeritus at St. Petersburg College.  She was named the SPC Faculty Champion for Communication (2009-2010) and Master Teacher in the Humanities Department at Clearwater (speech used to be in the HUM Department).

She also won the Teacher of the Year from the Florida Communication Association, national and state scholarships from Delta Kappa Gamma Society International (teaching honorary), a national scholarship from Alpha Xi Delta National Fraternity for College Women, and Who's Who in American Education (twice).

In 2000, she won the Alumni Citation for Academic Excellence which is a national award from the Defiance College in Defiance, Ohio, and in 2001, she was recognized as a Distinguished Alumna from the University of South Florida.

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:

She is a past president of the Florida Communication Association, and she is currently the Secretary.  She served 15 years on the FCA Executive Board, including one year as VP, one year as Secretary, two years as Treasurer (2008 and 2009) and three years as Editor of the FCA Journal (October 2002-October 2005).  In 2015, she was appointed to serve on the FCA Fiduciary Committee. From 1988 to 2009, she presented at the Florida Communication Association convention every year, and she presented at FCA in the fall of 2012.  She attended the conventions from 2016-2021.

Each year from 1988-2000, she presented research at the National Communication Association conventions, and she attended NCA again in the fall of 2012. 

She has also presented research at four Southern States Communication Association conventions, and she attended the 2023 convention in St. Petersburg.

In 2011, she was part of the very first Teachapalooza conference for college professors.  This conference was presented by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg which is the primary center for media education in the world.

For eight years, she traveled overseas to serve as an adjudicator for the International Forensics Association annual championship tournament.

She is a life member of the Society of Professional Journalists, and, for four years, she chaired the student scholarship contest for the Mid-Florida Pro Chapter of SPJ. 

She is also a life member of the Alumni Associations of the University of South Florida, Bowling Green State University, and The Defiance College.

She is continuing her mother's status as Charter Member of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, located in the Washington, D.C. building which formerly housed a Masonic Lodge (where her grandfather served as Master Mason). 

COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS:

Locally, Dr. Jefferis is a three-time Past President of the 350-member Clearwater Alumnae Panhellenic - serving as President in 2018-2019, 2006-2007 and 1994-1995.The group's mission is to raise $7000 a year to give out in college scholarships; $8000 was raised in 2018-2019.

She is the 2019-2025 President of the 75-year-old alumnae chapter of the Alpha Xi Delta sorority.  She was the president in 2012-2014, and then Vice President-Membership in 2014-2016, and Secretary in 2016-2019.

She is a Past President of Gamma, the third-oldest Florida chapter of the Delta Kappa Gamma Society International (teaching honorary).  In 2021, Gamma Chapter merged with Beta Iota Chapter and she is active in this chapter now as Philanthropy Co-Chair.

She coordinates a two-county USF alumni group and a three-county SPC alumni group; each used to meet three times a year and now meets once a year.

She is a percussionist:  she was the section leader in the Clearwater Community Band for over 20 years, and the Clearwater Symphony Orchestra's principal percussionist, a featured performer with the Summit Musicians, the section leader in the Dunedin Community Band, and the drummer/announcer for the Summit Swing Orchestra.  She has played percussion in the pit orchestra for community musicals produced by Clearwater City Players ("Porgy and Bess" and "Brigadoon" - summer musicals in Ruth Eckerd Hall), Royalty Theatre ("Annie"), and Francis Wilson Playhouse ("Babes in Toyland"). 

She was the pit percussionist for five musicals produced in the summer term by Dunedin and Clearwater and Countryside High Schools together ("Hello Dolly," "Oklahoma!," "Brigadoon," "Carousel," and "No No Nannette").  She was the pit percussionist for the fall production of "The Wizard of Oz" at Dunedin High School, and for the fall production of "Damn Yankees" with Clearwater High School which was chosen to be one of two musicals showcased the following spring at the State of Florida High School Thespian Convention in Tampa at what is now called The Straz.