Professor Grimes became the chair of the department and Scripps Howard Professor of Journalism on June 1, 2000, with a background in both journalism and education.

She has been a journalist for more than 25 years. She was the first director for the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire and Semester in Washington Program. She also has been a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University; a visiting professor at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University; and a Fellow at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

She was a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 20 years, 11 of them in the paper's Washington bureau. She also has worked in radio news and for newspapers in Virginia and North Carolina. Among her assignments: the U.S. invasion of Panama, the United Nations during the Persian Gulf war and national politics. She has reported from Nicaragua, Mexico, London, Ireland, Cyprus, China, Japan and Liberia. She spent five months reconstructing the lives and deaths of five Catholic missionaries killed in Liberia's civil war.

She has done investigative reporting on rape, on foster care of children and on boarding homes for the elderly. Her work has won awards; helped change state and federal laws; and helped to get better services for rape victims, foster children and the elderly.

She is married to Tom W. Whitford, a former feature writer turned artist. She is passionate about journalism and good writing.