Odom is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at Temple University.
Teaching Circles is the working title of a documentary film that seeks to capture and explore the Temple University Journalism Department's decade-long community-engagement initiative to revive and support student media in Philadelphia School District high schools. Participants in the department’s community-based-learning partnership share their experiences and insights about poor public school conditions, limited extra-curricular programming, the difficult lives of impoverished children, race relations, class divisions, the striving and capacities of college students and the value and omnipresence of teaching and learning.
Maida Cassandra Odom has been a faculty member in the Department of Journalism since 2005. She teaches Public Affairs Reporting and Elements of Writing and directs the department’s internship program and community outreach to Philadelphia high schools. She holds a certificate in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania where she earned a master of liberal arts degree. She is also a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Odom spent most of her journalism career as a staff writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer writing about urban issues on the city desk and then as a feature writer covering work-life issues and profiling prominent figures. She began her writing career working as an intern at the Akron Beacon Journal and then the Chicago Tribune. She has written two plays based on her reporting experiences, “The Executioner” and “Move Mocks Us All” and has made two documentary films: “1199@25,” the story of District 1199C of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, and “Charles Bowser -- His Work, His Wisdom” the story a Philadelphia mayoral candidate during the 1970s.