San Francisco State University Professor Selected for Alex Trebek Legacy Fellowship by Television Academy

San Francisco State University professor Jennifer Arin has been selected for an Alex Trebek Legacy Fellowship by the Television Academy Foundation in Hollywood. She is one of 18 professors selected from colleges and universities nationwide for the 2025 fellowship program.

Since 2021, the Foundation has offered Alex Trebek Legacy Fellowships, established by the Harry & Judy Friedman Family Foundation, in honor of the late television icon and Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, which provide financial support for educators from community colleges and minority-serving institutions to attend its annual Media Educators Conference. The three-day conference, held at the Television Academy’s North Hollywood campus in California Oct. 22-24, connects college classrooms with the television industry by providing media professors with curriculum-enhancing seminars on the latest in the art, science and business of television with prominent leaders in entertainment.

Arin is a lecturer in the Department of English Language & Literature in the College of Health and Social Sciences at San Francisco State University.

Since joining San Francisco State in 1999, Professor Arin has shown an ability to engage even the most reluctant student, a reflection on how well she is able to communicate her passion for literature and writing, and win students over to that perspective. A widely published poet and essayist, skilled translator, and active member of the literary community of the Bay Area and beyond, she uses innovative teaching methods and academic projects to engage with students, compelling them to become more proficient writers, and eager seekers of knowledge.

Arin is the author of the poetry book “Ways We Hold” (Dos Madres Press) and the verse chapbook “The Roots of Desire” (Thicket Press); and her essays and poems have been published in both the U.S. and Europe, including in The AWP Writer’s Chronicle, The San Francisco Chronicle, Gastronomica, Puerto del Sol, Poet Lore, ZYZZYVA, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among many others. She has written and/or hosted poetry segments for diverse television and radio programs, and did the French-to-English translations of documents about Hergé (the Belgian artist who created the comic-strip character Tintin) for the official web site that accompanied the release of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s Hollywood film, The Adventures of Tintin (2011).

Arin’s awards include, among others, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a PEN Writer's Fund grant, and a Poets & Writers’ Writers-On-Site residency. She also received a Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching from San Francisco State University, and two Excellence in Advising awards from NACADA (National Academic Advising Association).