Associate Professor Andrew Mendelson, JOUR, MMC, has been named the 2011 recipient of the Kappa Tau Alpha college honor society’s William H. Taft Outstanding Adviser Award. KTA gives only one award each year, and the winner is chosen from many nominations of educators from top journalism schools across the country. Named in honor of the late William H. Taft, KTA executive director emeritus, the award “recognizes advisers who have compiled long-term records of superior service to KTA and who by action and example have actively promoted scholarship in our field.” Mendelson received his award Aug. 11 at the national convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in St. Louis, Mo.
Category Archives: Faculty News
Assistant Professor Baasanjav, BTMM, MMC, has article and book chapter published
Assistant Professor Undrahbuyan Baasanjav, BTMM, MMC, has had her article, “Web-use Patterns for Civic Discourse: The Case of Mongolian Organizations,” published in the journal Information, Communication and Society. Click here to read it.
Also, a book chapter by Baasanjav titled “Global Digital Divide: Language Gap and Post-communism in Mongolia” will appear in E-Governance and Civic Engagement: Factors and Determinants of E-Democracy, to be published by IGI-Global in fall 2011; more information about the book is available here.
Professor Hobbs, BTMM, MMC and student Michael RobbGrieco, MMC, have book chapter published
A book chapter by Professor Renee Hobbs, BTMM, MMC, and student Michael RobbGrieco, MMC, appears in the Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts (Third Edition), edited by Diane Lapp and Doug Fisher and published by Routledge. The chapter is titled “Passive Dupes, Code Breakers or Savvy Users: Theorizing Media Literacy Education in English Language Arts.” A PDF copy is available at the Media Education Lab website, http://mediaeducationlab.com.
SCT well represented at international conference
Many School of Communications and Theater representatives presented their work at the International Association for Media and Communciation Research (IAMCR) conference in July 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey. SCT attendance at this large international communications conference included Interim Dean Tom Jacobson; faculty members Susan Jacobson, John Lent, Nancy Morris, Patrick Murphy and Karen Turner; Banu Akdenizli, MMC ’06, Leanne Chang, MMC ’07, Warat (Sudjai) Karuchit, MMC ’05, and Selcan Kaynak, MMC ’03; and MMC student Satarupa Dasgupta.
The 2012 IAMCR conference will be held in Durban, South Africa.
Click here for more information.
TUJ faculty members examine social media after tsunami
Professor Cornelius Pratt, STRC, along with TUJ Professors Irene Herrera and Ronald Carr, have written a chapter titled “Social Media for Crisis Communication on Japan’s 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake: A Critical Textual Analysis,” which will be published in The New Media and Public Relations (second edition), New York: Peter Lang, 2012. In it, they write that social media platforms “are redefining Japanese cultural values and assumptions vis-à-vis communications — those that no longer depend solely on conventional outlets and cultural practices, but are being expanded to incorporate alternative media platforms as channels for the public good as well as for public vehemence and outrage.”
Associate Professor Feistman discusses reputation management at conference
Associate Professor Gregg Feistman, STRC, recently gave a presentation on Reputation Management at the Insurance Marketing Communications Association’s annual conference in Toronto, Canada. Speaking before a room of marketing communications professionals, Feistman’s presentation, “Reputation Management: Building It, Maintaining It and What it Means for the Bottom Line,” is based on his reputation management class in the Strategic Communication Department’s M.S. program.
“Most people have a misconception of what reputation and reputation management is,” Feistman notes. “It’s not branding or advertising. It’s a very high-level strategic approach dealing with the expectations of an organization’s stakeholders. Whether it’s a Fortune 500 corporation, a non-profit organization or an educational institution, reputation is critical to sustained success. It’s very fragile, and understanding what makes up reputation and how it can be managed through effective communication is of vital importance to communicators and businesspeople in all organizations.”
Feistman’s message of aligning business strategy, marketing strategy, brand management and employee engagement was well received by those in attendance.
“Similar to what I discuss with my students, I tried to get the marketing communications professionals in the room to think about reputation in a definitive, measurable way, not just as some intangible concept. Reputation has real value, and a real impact on the bottom line, and professional communicators have a vital role in building and protecting it in any organization.”
Associate Professor Gluck: Social media allows people to participate in Casey Anthony verdict
When Casey Anthony was found not guilty on charges that she killed her daughter, people raced to their computers to voice their opinions on the verdict.
Associate Professor Paul Gluck, BTMM, says people tend to connect to news stories like this on an emotional level. And now, technology provides them a platform to tell the world how they feel.
“Social media in particular has provided people with a lot of impetus to participate, to observe, to connect,” he told NBC 10. “It’s a gut-level story. It doesn’t just engage you intellectually.”
Click here to watch the full story.
Theater professors’ shows rank among Philly’s best — Philadelphia Weekly
Philadelphia Weekly writer J. Cooper Robb ranked his top ten shows from the 2010-11 Philadelphia theater season.
Among them were [title of show], staged by Mauckingbird Theatre Company, of which Assistant Professor Peter Reynolds is the co-founder and artistic director, and Superior Donuts, directed by Assistant Professor Ed Sobel at Arden Theatre Company.
Click here to read the full story.
Professor Cai trains Afghanistan workers in gender communication
Professor Deborah Cai, STRC, spent five days in Rome this spring in an effort to help a group of government workers from Afghanistan improve their gender communication and leadership skills.
From May 23 to 27, she and a team from Women’s Campaign International trained 25 Afghanistan government employees as part of a seven-week program organized by the Italian Foreign Ministry that covered topics such as public policy and project management. The participants – both men and women – were from government departments such as Justice, Agriculture, Women Affairs and more.
“My primary role was to cover gender and intercultural communication — talk about being a competent communicator, how to build trust, types of personal power we can have and how to develop them — and then to work with the students on public speaking — how to project, how to organize a speech, and how to deliver it,” Cai says.
Other WCI trainers covered leadership and managing the media, while Marjorie Margolies, president of WCI, and Valerie Biden Owen, who creates political campaign ads for radio and television, talked about crisis management in the workplace and delivering messages effectively through the media.
The training sessions helped the civil servants create five-year plans and develop speeches about their personal visions for their work in Afghanistan. They shared their speeches and critiqued one another on their delivery.
“The Italian Foreign Ministry see this training as one way to bring about long term change within Afghanistan, by working with those that work in the government to help them learn how to do what they do better and to gain a vision for the future,” Cai said. In December, she and her WCI colleagues trained diplomats from Afghanistan on similar topics.
Cai noted that the women in the class were particularly interested in learning more about the trainers and their abilities to balance their personal and professional lives to achieve success.
Paper by Associate Professor Darling-Wolf earns award
Associate Professor Fabienne Darling-Wolf, JOUR, received the Top Faculty Paper Award from the Global Communication and Social Change division at the International Communication Association’s annual conference in Boston in May.
The paper was titled, “Disjuncture and difference from the banlieue to the ganba: Global hip hop and the politics of representation.”