Awards
Congratulations to Department of Communication undergraduate student award winners. Together, they received more than $17,000 in awards!
Edward L. Bernays Primus Inter Pares Award: Tess Lehrman
Kenneth J. Bissett Communication Award: Julianna Raimonda
Chester H. Freeman Communication Leadership Award: Samantha Johnstone
Anson H. Rowe Awards (Junior): Luke Stewart & Daniela Benitez Vallejo
Anson H. Rowe Award (Senior): Garrett Spillerman
Alfred N. Schwartz Memorial Prize in Agricultural Journalism: Ava Maduro
Sheila Turner Seed Memorial Prize: Caroline Michailoff
Graduate student Sohinee Bera, along with co-board members of the Graduate Student School Outreach Program (GRASSHOPR—note the clever acronym!), were awarded a Community Access and Outreach Award for Impact on Communities beyond Cornell. The honor, awarded by the Graduate School Office of Inclusion and Student Engagement, recognized their sustained efforts in coordinating graduate student engagement with local teachers. The GRASSHOPR board pairs graduate students with local teachers to teach courses of 3–5 sessions each based on topics related to the graduate students’ fields or interests. This year, they organized 33 mini courses, taught across 40 classrooms, in 15 different schools, across Tomkins, Ontario, Broome, and other local counties. Course topics include nutrition, plant science, material engineering, psychology, and political sciences. The Graduate Diversity and Inclusion Award and Recognition Celebration takes place on May 14, 4:00–6:00 pm, in G10 Biotech Building. Friends and colleagues are invited to attend and encouraged to register.
Events
Please join us for a special COMMColloquium Monday, April 28, 3:00 pm, where graduate students will preview their talks for the upcoming International Communication Association Annual Conference. The event takes place in 102 Mann Library Building and is followed by a reception, located in The Hub of the Department of Communication.
Ria Gualano, “Representing Invisible Disabilities and Chronic Pain through Social VR Avatar Movement, Appearance and Apparel”
Andrew Restieri, “’Them’s a Rat:’ Queerness and Inclusive Communities in World of Warcraft”
Sarah Salman, “Empowering the Boys: Nice Guy Creators and the Viral Brand of ‘Palatable’ Masculinity”
Ruiyao Wang, “Intersectional Identity in Liminality: Examine Hong Kong Asylum-Seeker Mothers’ Narrative Identity from General to Maternal Context”
Invited Lectures
On April 16, Associate Professor Neil Lewis, Jr., delivered a lecture entitled “What We Learn from Where We Live” to the Department of Psychology and SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Neil discussed his research on how spatial and social segregation affect the ways that people think and communicate about social issues, and the implications of those processes for intergroup relations in multiethnic societies like the United States.
On April 21, Assistant Professor Wunpini Mohammed delivered a lecture entitled “Building Liberatory Futures in African Feminist Movements” as part of the University of Oregon’s African Studies Lecture Series. Wunpini presented current discourses on feminist activism and praxis in Africa using Ghana as the focus. Through decolonial approaches, she presented organizing and theorizing strategies focusing on Ghana’s socio-historical reality. She argued that to build liberatory futures in African feminist movements, we need to understand and contextualize gender and sexualities within indigenous African frameworks.
Media
Professor Bruce Lewenstein participated in an episode of CivicSciTV where he discussed the recent Nature Human Behavior publication, “Trust in Scientists and Their Role in Society across 68 Countries.” CivicSciTV is a network of programs reporting on scholarship, practice, and lived experience across the landscape of civic science and has featured other Comm alum. This is not the first time CivicSciTV has engaged Bruce and his expertise. A few months ago, the network featured a clip of Bruce arguing that when you are dealing with “wicked problems,” you will always need public engagement.
