Brad Yates is a tenured full professor and founding Dean of the School of Communication, Film, and Media at the University of West Georgia (UWG), established July 1, 2021. A 33-year veteran of higher education, he has been a member of the UWG faculty since 2000, teaching courses in media law, media programming and management, and all levels of television/video and radio production.

Before his appointment as Dean, Yates held several key administrative roles, including Digital Media & Telecommunication Concentration Head (2014–2017), Interim Chair of Criminology (2017–2018), Interim Chair of Mass Communications (2018–2019), and Chair of Mass Communications (2019–2021). He was selected for the 2017 Governor’s Teaching Fellows Summer Symposium and has participated in competitive fellowships and seminars with the International Radio and Television Society, NATPE Educational Foundation, Radio-Television News Directors Foundation, and the Television Academy Foundation.

Yates has earned numerous honors, including the Professional Association of Academic Advisors’ Faculty Mentor of the Year (2022) and Faculty Partnership Award (2025), as well as UWG’s College of Social Sciences Outstanding Teaching (2015), Outstanding Service (2014), and Outstanding Mentor (2012, 2018) awards. He founded UWG’s WOLF Radio and served as faculty advisor for the UWG Chapter of NBS-AERho, earning NBS-AERho Advisor of the Year (2013, 2017) and UWG Student Organization Advisor of the Year (2014). He also served on the NBS-AERho Board of Governors for three years.

An active member of AEJMC, ASJMC, and BEA, Yates currently serves on AEJMC’s Emerging Scholars Committee and the Executive Committee of ASJMC as Medium Program Representative. He is a former chair of AEJMC’s Entertainment Studies Interest Group.

His research interests include media literacy, mass communication education, popular music, and Bruce Springsteen. His work has been presented at national and international conferences and published in journals such as Atlantic Journal of Communication, International Journal of Instructional Media, The Internet and Higher Education, Journal of Radio & Audio Media, Journal of Popular Music Studies, and Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education (SIMILE).

Yates holds a B.A. in Communication Studies and an M.Ed. in Curriculum & Instruction from Lynchburg College (now University of Lynchburg), an M.S. in TV-Radio from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and a Ph.D. from the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications. His professional background is in television/video production—and he has attended 50 Bruce Springsteen concerts.