Joe La Puma serves as SVP of Content Strategy at Complex NTWRK and hosts Complex’s "Sneaker Shopping," the world’s No. 1 sneaker show, which has garnered over 1 billion views on YouTube. He has been at the forefront of sneaker and street culture at Complex for the past 15 years.

La Puma started his journalism career writing for The Daily Campus and was voted “Rookie of the Year” by fellow staffers. After graduating from UConn in 2005 with a degree in Journalism, he returned to Bay Shore to manage a sneaker store, The Finish Line —where he previously worked in high school—while contributing articles to both local and global publications like Newsday and Hypebeast.com.

In 2006, La Puma landed an internship at Complex magazine, a pop culture publication specializing in convergence culture through hip-hop, sneakers, and fashion. La Puma has written more cover stories (21) than any other writer in Complex history, including profiles on Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, and Kid Cudi. La Puma is also a published author of the book “Complex Presents: Sneaker of the Year: The Best Since ’85.”

In his current SVP role, La Puma has led Complex to over 200% growth in audience and engagement. In 2014, Complex debuted the YouTube show Sneaker Shopping, a series that La Puma created and hosts to this day. Over the past decade of Sneaker Shopping, La Puma has interviewed icons like Eminem, Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin Hart, Mark Wahlberg, Billie Eilish, Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, and conducted one of the only lifestyle interviews with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2020 election cycle.

The show has filmed episodes across the U.S., as well as abroad in China, England, Spain, and Japan. With his extensive editorial work on footwear and over 300 episodes of Sneaker Shopping, La Puma is regarded as one of the foremost sneaker experts in the world. La Puma is a three-time Webby Award winner and has been featured on Good Morning America, and The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.

In 2024, La Puma was inducted into the Bay Shore High School Hall of Fame, a group that includes only 79 members since the school opened in 1893. La Puma currently lives in Brooklyn, and takes half-days at work when he can during UConn Basketball March Madness runs.

La Puma will address CLAS graduates at the 5:30 p.m ceremony, which includes UConn Journalism majors.

Below is a picture from La Puma's visit to UConn in November 2023, where he spoke with a large class of journalism students and faculty.

Steven G. Smith, an award-winning multimedia storyteller and professor in the Department of Journalism, has been named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow for 2025, joining just 25 other scholars nationally in receiving the prestigious honor for researchers in the humanities and social sciences.

Each fellow will receive $200,000 for research focusing on subjects related to political polarization, with the aim of eventually producing a book or other major study, the Carnegie Corporation of New York announced Wednesday.

“Receiving the Carnegie Fellowship is an honor, and I’m excited to continue working on ‘These United States,’ my long-term documentary photo essay exploring American identity in the 21st century,” says Smith, who won a Pulitzer Prize for photography as part of the Rocky Mountain News photo essay team that was honored in 2003. “The fellowship will provide invaluable time and resources to develop the project further and share stories from across the country. I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity and for the support provided by the Carnegie Foundation and the University of Connecticut.”

Smith, whose previous work includes the award-winning documentary films “The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Journey” and “One World, One People,” has already been working on his current project for a year and a half, traveling the U.S. and documenting its people in photography.

“My perspective as a visual journalist is to see what our country looks like right now,” Smith says. “It’s a portrait of America at the time of its 250^th birthday.”

Visual media like photography and film offer a chance to examine complicated and emotionally charged subjects with unique nuance, Smith says, which is partly what drew him to the project.

“I’m a big believer in a wide variety of approaches,” he says. “Human beings are complex, and photography and visual communication can bring these subtleties and details to the surface that might otherwise be overlooked.”

Smith is just the second UConn faculty member to receive a Carnegie fellowship; Yonatan Morse, associate professor of political science, became the first in 2020.

Under the leadership of Carnegie president Dame Louise Richardson, the 2025 class marks the second year of the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program’s focus on building a body of research focused on political polarization. Carnegie will commit up to $18 million to this effort over the three-year period.

The winning proposals approach polarization through a wide array of disciplines and methods. Projects include analyzing the causes of the increasing political divides between men and women; assessing where Americans find common ground when it comes to their health; and understanding how partisan media, consultants, and entertainment industries are driving polarization for short-term profits, among other areas of research.

“Through these fellowships Carnegie is harnessing the unrivaled brainpower of our universities to help us to understand how our society has become so polarized,” says Richardson. “Our future grantmaking will be informed by what we learn from these scholars as we seek to mitigate the pernicious effects of political polarization.”

The focus on political polarization attracted more than 300 applications for the fellowship. A panel of jurors, chaired by Richardson and comprised of current and former leaders from some of the nation’s preeminent institutions, made the final selections. They prioritized proposals based on the originality and promise of the research, its potential impact on the field, and the applicants’ plans for communicating the findings to a broad audience.

Smith says the final shape of his project is still to be determined, but envisions possibilities like a book and exhibition of the work.

“I’d like to see this project be less overtly political and more a celebration of who we are,” Smith says. “Sometimes, when you’re out taking the pulse of the country, it can be a little frightening. But as I get out and shake hands and meet people and learn about their lives, I see a lot of kindness. That’s been very healing, to meet all these wonderful people and try to get just a little bit of their story.”

Founded in 2015, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program provides the most generous stipend of its kind for research in the humanities and social sciences. To date, Carnegie has named almost 300 fellows, representing a philanthropic investment of more than $59 million. Congressional testimony by past fellows has addressed topics such as social media and privacy protections, transnational crime, governmental responses to pandemics, and college affordability. Fellows have received honors including the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award.

Ally LeMaster '24 (CLAS), editor-in-chief of the 2024 edition of Long River Review, UConn's literary and arts magazine, gives opening remarks during the magazine's launch party at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in downtown Storrs on April 25, 2024.

LeMaster, a Journalism and English double major, was among the student staff members who celebrated the launch of the 27th annual print edition on Thursday, April 25, at Barnes & Noble in Storrs Center. 

A culmination of a yearlong interdisciplinary effort that includes both student staff positions and a course offered in the spring, the award-winning journal of literature and art pulls literary submissions across multiple genres from all over the world and showcases the top content.  

At the event, contributors read their featured work and staff members shared words of gratitude about their time putting the magazine together. 

“The launch party is one of my favorite times in the year because you get to actually hear contributors go up and read the poems or the stories that you’ve loved and cherished and stared at while editing, and you get to hear them talk about it,” says current Editor-in-Chief Allison LeMaster’24 (CLAS), a double major in English and journalism .  

As Long River Review editors, students work together on panels to review submissions and select work to be featured, edit and refine submissions, and designing publish a physical journal and a website.  

The publication has also been a learning opportunity for students who plan to go into other fields.  

“I want to be a journalist, but this has prepared me a lot for editing — I’m a pretty good editor,” LeMaster says.  

LeMaster, who is also an intern at the Connecticut Mirror, covering the legislative session, said working on the literary publication with different narrative and literary styles helped her develop storytelling skills that will help her as she pursues a career in journalism. The experience will help her tell important news stories in a way that helps capture an audience’s attention and connect to them.  

But it’s not just the practical skills LeMaster enjoyed about her time with the literary publication. LeMaster, a commuter student who recently transferred from the Hartford campus, says working on the publication allowed her to get acquainted with the campus.  

“What was cool about being the editor-in-chief is that you’re allowed to have your passion project and also help people get involved with it and see how cool it can be working with authors, working with staff, working with people who care about literature,” LeMaster says. Gaining that experience is just so awesome.”  

In an age of digital publication, the students agree that creating something tangible is a special kind of satisfaction.   

“There’s no feeling like getting that magazine in your hand and being like, ‘I helped create this,’” LeMaster says. “It’s such a cool feeling.”  

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