Jim Willis is a journalist turned college professor. After graduating with a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, he began a decade as a journalist with newspapers such as The Daily Oklahoman and The Dallas Morning News. Picking up an M.A. from Texas A&M along the way, Willis began a Ph.D. in Journalism at the University of Missouri. Teaching there for two years,
he completed his degree and moved east, winding up as chair of the Communication Department at Boston College. In 1995 he took an endowed professorship at the University of Memphis. His eight years there were punctuated by a year as McMahon Centennial Professor of Journalism at the University of Oklahoma, and then he moved west to become chair of the Communication Studies Department at Azusa Pacific University. He joined Ashland University in the fall of 2005 as he and his wife Anne relocated to
the Midwest to be closer to their families. Willis has authored or co-authored nine books, and he has two sons, a senior at the University of Oklahoma and a freshman at Indiana University.