Never Stop Looking

Bobby Model Professor Shane Epping reflects on the impact of his endowed professorship.

 

By Shane Epping

 

I didn’t fully understand what an endowed professorship was before I held one. While completing a Ph.D. in journalism at the University of Missouri, I suspected that finding a faculty position in visual communication would be challenging. Photojournalism programs are rare, and the industry has spent two decades shedding the staff photographers that once defined American newspapers and magazines. Academic openings in my field don’t come often. So, when I discovered an opening for a photojournalism professorship at the University of Wyoming, I stopped and read it twice. Then a third time. In the middle of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the professorship was a lifebuoy. Something that kept me moving forward. The more I learned about what it represented, the more I appreciated its uniqueness. What I did not yet know was that the position came with a name, and the name came with a story.

 

Bobby Model 
Bobby Model was a UW graduate who grew up on a ranch near Cody, Wyo. He was a climber, an adventurer and a photojournalist whose work appeared in some of the most respected publications in the world. His relationship with National Geographic began in 1995, when he joined a Wyoming team of cowboy climbers to free-climb Trango Tower in Pakistan, a feat featured in the April 1996 issue, where Bobby appeared on the cover. Over time, his interests evolved from adventure photography to photographic reportage addressing news and geopolitical and social issues. 

In 2004, he relocated to Nairobi to cover Africa. He died in 2009 at the age of 36. Ten years later, his father Bob created the Bobby Model Photojournalism Professorship to honor his son’s legacy. 

An endowed professorship is a promise. Someone believed enough in a discipline to fund it with the hope that its impact would last for generations. My job is to make sure that investment keeps compounding. First and foremost, I was hired in the spirit of honoring a legacy that emphasizes telling stories with a camera. It has been my observation that although most students I teach do not necessarily intend to become photographers for National Geographic, they do want to make pictures of people and things that matter to them. Photography is, at its core, simply paying attention. That is something anyone can do for the rest of their life.

 

Students First
The most direct measure of what this professorship makes possible is in the students it reaches. At the 2026 Visual and Interactive Media Festival, a blind-juried, peer-reviewed international photography competition organized by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, UW students swept all three categories — single journalism photo, photo essay and photo illustration — taking gold, silver and bronze in every division. These are students competing against programs at institutions with decades of legacy behind them. Our progress is attributable to a serious, focused investment.

Some of that investment is structural. The endowment has allowed us to build an equipment inventory so that any student who cannot afford a professional camera can still do professional work. It has funded guest speakers with international accolades, including a 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner, a renowned photojournalist here in Laramie, professional workshops and travel opportunities that most small programs cannot offer. We have also formed a partnership with The Photo Society, through which our students receive monthly lectures from some of the world’s most celebrated photographers. To our knowledge, we are the only university in the country to have established this kind of partnership. 

In 2023, I created the annual Bobby Model Photojournalism Award to recognize students for their commitment to visual storytelling. More than anything else, I want students to know they are valued and to keep making pictures. Five students have received it so far. Three have used the award to attend the Missouri Photo Workshop, one of the most prestigious photojournalism training programs in the country. Bob Model’s generosity created this professorship. This honor exists so his son’s name can keep traveling, carried forward by the students it sends into the world.

 

Moving Forward
I am a better teacher today than I was when I arrived at UW in 2021. A significant part of that is because of what this professorship has made possible. In the summer of 2025, I was selected as one of 10 photographers nationwide to attend Moving Forward in Photography, an advanced workshop in Maine led by Sam Abell, one of the most celebrated photographers in the history of National Geographic. His approach to patience, composition and the relationship between waiting and meaning has already found its way into how I teach. In the case of Abell, we call it our “dark-eyed junco,” a reference to a photograph he made that included a small bird nobody else could see. It didn’t matter that others couldn’t see it. Abell could. It was an indication of life only recognized by the photographer. That is the kind of seeing I am trying to teach.

The endowment has supported my attendance at national and international conferences where the field’s most important conversations are happening. At gatherings in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and San Francisco, I have served on numerous panels, organized several professional events, and brought back ideas that keep my courses current and my research relevant.

I have used professorship funds to support the Visual Communication Conference, an annual peer-reviewed gathering of scholars and practitioners from around the world. I organized the gatherings in Saratoga, Wyo., and Estes Park, Colo., subsidizing participants’ registration fees, and have attended the conference in California and Oregon. Several UW graduate students have presented their research at the conference, placing our program in conversation with some of the top visual communication scholars.

My own photography has benefited, too. In the spirit of Bobby Model, who spent his career documenting remote corners of the world, I traveled to a remote village in the Peruvian Amazon accessible only by boat to document women artisans who live and work there. The project became a 2025 solo exhibition in Denver, where I raised thousands of dollars for the women I photographed. Over the past few years, my work has been admitted to more than 20 photography exhibitions across 10 states. I am still a working photographer, which is important for my students to see.

 

Personal Connections 
In 2022, I drove to Cody to meet Bob Model in person. It was not a required part of my job, but it felt like the right thing to do. I brought with me a dozen photographs from my initial trip to Perú, where two UW students and I had traveled to help build an elementary school and document the experience. I wanted Bob to see what his generosity had made possible.

 

That visit meant a great deal to me. I have made a point of touching base with him every semester since, sharing highlights and introducing him to the students carrying his son’s name forward. I also ask recipients of Model funds to write thank-you notes to Bob directly. I want him to know that his investment reaches real people who are grateful for it.

Bobby Model was, among other things, a quiet philanthropist. He made gifts to small community health clinics and rural schools in faraway places where a little could mean a lot. In 2010, the Bobby Model Charitable Fund was established to continue supporting humanitarian efforts close to his heart. I think about that when I consider the trips I have taken with students to Perú. In Rwanda, another UW student documented similar humanitarian work. This summer, I will co-lead a study-abroad trip to Namibia with 11 UW students, where photography will be part of the curriculum. We will spend most of our time at the Cheetah Conservation Fund documenting its work. Model funds have helped subsidize the trip for several students. Bobby spent his career going to the places most people never see. We are trying to do the same.

Although students who enroll in my photography courses do so with varying ambitions, some of them discover that photography can be more than a hobby. It can be a way of seeing the world, a way of serving communities, a way of making a living. Part of what this professorship makes possible is the exposure that creates — those countless moments of discovery. You cannot want to pursue something you have never been shown. The Bobby Model Professorship helps show it.

Several former students are now practicing photographers across the country. Others carry photography with them in different ways, as a skill, a habit of seeing. That is what this professorship makes possible. Not just photographers, but people who see the world differently.

In 2012, my wife and I lost a child the day before her scheduled delivery. That loss led me to photograph more than 100 families at local hospitals who experienced the loss of an infant or young child. Those lives not lived were honored by photography — proof of their existence. Their stories, however brief, mattered.

Bob Model lost a son. I lost a daughter. We have never spoken directly about that. But I think it is part of our shared experience — and part of what I carry into this work every day.

The best way I know to honor Bobby is to make sure that the students who carry his name forward never stop looking.