Fall 2022/Spring 2023 Newsletter

It’s about time.

Extended Family. Ph.D. student Sohinee Bera won a Cornell Libraries Elevator Art Contest for this painting. It will be on display on the first-floor elevator doors of Olin Library for six months.

Message from the Chair

GREETINGS FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION

We had another amazing year. Free from the many restrictions of the recent past, we returned to doing what we do best educating future communicators and conducting cutting-edge research. And we had a bit of fun along the way.

It was another banner year of productivity for our faculty. They published 75 articles in flagship journals and five chapters in prestigious books. They received 25 grants totaling more than $22 million with funding from prestigious foundations and organizations such as the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Ford Foundation, NYC Mayor’s Office of Community Health, and the Media Democracy Fund, to name but a few. They won research, mentoring, and top paper awards and a distinguished research fellowship. Two faculty members were promoted from assistant professor to associate professor with indefinite tenure. We also bid goodbye to a beloved professor, who retired after a 36-year career (see pg. 24). And continuing the tradition of employing our faculty members in senior leadership roles, the college promoted one of our professors to Senior Associate Dean. This fits nicely into our stealth plot to take over the university!

We also have news on the faculty hiring front. We have been approved to conduct four searches across the next few years. Two of these are CALS Moonshot hires (out of only 25 granted across the college), which the college defines as “opportunities to collaborate on future-focused, cross-disciplinary

scientific discoveries and breakthroughs and to align research, education, and extension programs for greater impact and stronger connectivity.” We are also in the process of searching for a Communication and AI scholar. This will be a targeted senior hire, and we have identified an excellent candidate. Finally, we will again conduct a CALS Cohort faculty search. The goal of the initiative is to create a new group of scientists who focus on interdisciplinary scholarship and translational research with an emphasis on systemic challenges facing historically and habitually marginalized and disadvantaged communities. The search has already begun, and we have a strong pool. Interviews will take place in the fall, and the new assistant professor will begin July 1, 2024. It’ s such an exciting time in the department!

Of course our students continue to surprise and excel. Six graduate students defended dissertations and took off for academic positions across the country, and four performed splendidly on their A exams. We also had a record admissions cycle this year with 189 applications the most we’ve ever received. Three admits received fellowships: one Cornell Fellowship and two Deans’ Excellence Award Fellowships. They look to be a dynamic cohort. And did I mention our current students have been awarded multiple NSF dissertation grants and a Meta Fellowship?

The undergraduates were equally impressive. We graduated 71 students, including two interdisciplinary studies students. Many graduated with honors and several of them received academic awards. I realized as I began writing this letter that this is the cohort whose first year was interrupted by COVID. They’ ve come so far in so little time (or so long, with the way the pandemic seems to have altered our sense of time). We’

re so pleased with

their

many successes

Speaking of time...as you’ll see depicted throughout the newsletter, we indulged in a bit of creative clock punning. In response to a note from our business manager informing us that our clock was being repaired (see cover), we spent a few weeks responding (anonymously). Take a look. We’re very clever, if we do say so ourselves!

Editor: Kelli Carr

Building for Our Future

Would you like to name a space for yourself, a designee, or organization?

Did you know? A recent analysis from Georgetown University’

Center on Education and the Workforce named Cornell’s undergraduate communication program number one for return on investment among U.S. communication and media studies degree programs!

Undergraduate Student News

Congratulations to Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 Graduates!

IDS: Interdisciplinary Studies

Gavin Adler

Calista Ashley, magna cum laude

Lauren Baldinger, magna cum laude

Julia Barnett, summa cum laude

Shannon Brazier, cum laude

Sydney Breza, cum laude

Kathleen Castiello, magna cum laude

Dennis Child

Emily Choi, magna cum laude

Seanie Clark, magna cum laude

Brooke Kozek, magna cum laude

Samantha Krevolin, magna cum laude

Melissa LaFountain

Alan Lau

Xianyi Li, cum laude

Pierce Lukonaitis

Diego Magno

Patrick Mahoney, cum laude

Peter Muzyka

Athean Myat, summa cum laude

Megan Cleary Yuqi Pan

Morgan Darmo, cum laude

Sara DeGraw, cum laude

Lauren Pappas, cum laude

Jordan Patrick

Wylie Deitch Yichong Qiu, summa cum laude

Olivia Dybas, cum laude

Therese Fischer, summa cum laude

Chelsea Fox, magna cum laude

Erin Fox, cum laude

Emi Girardi, cum laude

Sophie Grippo, summa cum laude

Nkemdilim Haffner, cum laude

Sumaya Hardi, IDS

Arin Hendell, cum laude

Anna Hovis, magna cum laude

Vincent Huang

Chayse Ierlan

Elliott Ress

Jacob Ritter, cum laude

Michael Roscoe

Rachel Schneider, magna cum laude

Ella Schwartz, magna cum laude

Joy Shen, summa cum laude

Edom Solomon

Yitong Song, magna cum laude

Payton Spandow

Sarah Sperber, cum laude

Ariana Stephen, cum laude

JQ Stramanak

Kaitlyn Isaac Sivasangari Subramaniam, cum laude

Hailey Jacobs, magna cum laude

Stephanie Tan, IDS, magna cum laude

Jing Jin Savanna Tong, cum laude

Salvatore Jones

Lev Katreczko, cum laude

Ashlee Whittemore, summa cum laude

Ke Wu, magna cum laude

Jesse Kay Lucas Xu, magna cum laude

Sarah Kern, cum laude

Soha Khoso

Soojin Kim, magna cum laude

Grace Yang, magna cum laude

Chris Yeung, summa cum laude

Qinyue Yu, magna cum laude

Above left: Faculty (and two photobombers) gather before the ceremony. Above right: Professor Mike Shapiro gave the commencement speech. Below: Faculty announce students’ names and welcome them as Comm alum.

Awards, Honors & Scholarships

The Eastman Rice Communication & Community Engagement Fellowship awards $1,000 stipends to CALS students who collaborate with the Communication Institute, a partnership of the Department of Communication, Bronfenbrenner Center’s Office of Civic Engagement, and New York 4-H. Bringing together Cornell with 4-H youth and families from across New York State, the Institute aims to share ideas on contemporary issues and develop oral communication skills. Fellows worked with a team of 4-H leaders, 4-H youth, and Cornell faculty to create communication curricula that fosters consistency and excellent speaking skills in 4-H communities across the state.

Madeline Blank Mahnoor Cheema Lauren Chuhta Libby Elman Joanne Hu Brett Kaufman Kyle Lau Yeonseo Seok Bryce Vitulli

The Woodford Persuasive Speaking Contest features students nominated by their Oral Communication class peers who deliver speeches to an audience and panel of judges. The prize was established by New York Congressperson and Lieutenant Governor Stewart Lyndon Woodford. Five contestants shared a $2,800 prize.

1st Place: Calvin Fairchild, “Consideration of Consumption”: How Social Media Impacts Our Health.”

2nd Place: Kaitlyn Loder, “Delete Your Social. Now.”

3rd Place: Emily Cavanaugh, “BEE-utiful: A World with More Insect Zoos.”

Honorable Mention: Jacob Duffles, “Life Is a Drag: Why YOU Should Try Drag.”

Honorable Mention: Trevor Harbison, “Expect the Unexpected: Preventing the Next Global Pandemic.”

Senior Honors Thesis

Ariana Stephen, “Online-Only Relationships and Online Communities on Discord: Through the Lens of the Social Compensation Hypothesis.”

Awards, Honors & Scholarships, continued

The Department of Communication Awards

Edward L. Bernays Primus Inter Pares Award: Melissa LaFountain

This award recognizes students who demonstrate outstanding achievement and participation in Public Relations and write an essay. The award commemorates the “Father of Public Relations,” Edward Bernays ’12.

Kenneth J. Bissett Award: Therese Fischer

The Bissett award is given to students with the best portfolio of design and written material. The award commemorates Kenneth Bissett ’90, who was aboard Pan Am Flight 103 when it was destroyed by terrorists

Chester Freeman Award: Adele Williams

This award, established in honor of the Communication Professor, recognizes juniors who best exhibit the interdisciplinary character of the department.

Anson H. Rowe Award: Liam Monahan (Junior recipient) & Yichong Qiu (Senior recipient)

Rowe awards are given to juniors and seniors majoring in Communication, with preference given to students specializing in interpersonal communication, public speaking, radio, or television.

Alfred N. Schwartz Award: Lauren Pappas

The Schwartz award promotes excellence in agricultural journalism and are open to CALS students.

Sheila Turner Seed Award: Hannah Mitchell

This award is given to junior women majoring in communication. Sheila Turner Seed was a young writer and photojournalist who died suddenly.

With the support of alum, the Summer Grant Program provides monetary assistance to students with unpaid summer internships, helping fund travel, housing, and food. The grants, $4,500 in total this year, allow students to pursue opportunities that would otherwise be cost prohibitive. Interested in donating?

(literally)

Contact Lee Humphreys, lmh13@cornell.edu.

Amber Arquilevich, Data Analysis Intern, CALS Global Fellows Program

Coco Wen, Press Intern, Office of Senator Chuck Schumer

Zoey Arnold, Marketing & Communications Intern, City of Miami Beach

Bridget Santos, Intern, Massachusetts's 3rd District Office

Soojin Kim was named a Merrill Presidential Scholar. The program honors outstanding Cornell University graduating seniors; awardees are among the top 1% of their class. Merrill Scholars are asked to recognize a university and high school teacher as their most influential mentor. Soojin chose Senior Lecturer Lauren Chambliss and Ithaca High School teacher Joseph Exantus, pictured with President Martha Pollack (second from left).

WE REVAMPED COMMCONNECT, our annual professional development event that brings together students with alum and Advisory Board members. The event featured two panel discussions, “Experiences and Reflections of First-Generation College Students,” a topic relevant to many of our students, and “Sports Communication Careers,” one of our most popular career paths. These were followed by “table talk” sessions, focusing on the following topics: non-tech roles at startups/tech companies; positioning academic achievements (e.g., internships and club participation) for the job market; building and leveraging a network; applying passions to work; managing personal finances early career; and choosing a first job and building experience.

Comm-Unity Project

Chris Yeung, President

Lauren Pappas, Vice President

Kelsey LaFave, Secretary/Treasurer

Samantha Krevolin, Event Coordinator

Lauren Aubert, Social Media Coordinator

Did you know? As part of our podcast series, COMMConnections, students interview noted communication specialists. This academic year, they interviewed Tim Minton (Communications Director, New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority), Neeraj Khemlani (President, Co-Head, CBS News & Stations), and Libby Leist (Executive Vice President, Today and NBC News).

THIS YEAR MARKS the third year of the COMM-Unity Program (CUP), designed by Chair Lee Humphreys and co-led this year by Professor Diane Bailey and Undergraduate Program Coordinator Ashlee Cherry. The program pairs upper-level students with new underrepresented and first-generation students to help prepare them for the challenges of university life, improve their academic success, and encourage retention. Mentors met with mentees at least four times over the fall semester and hosted a CUP social that included faculty and staff. In 2022–2023, we had nine peer mentors, all BIPOC and first-gen. students themselves. In fall 2022, we offered the inaugural leadership course, “Leading by Mentoring: Being a COMM-Unity Mentor.” Mentors attended a weekly, onecredit course in which they read and shared reflections on topics such as time management, imposter syndrome, and summer internships.

We offer our wholehearted thanks to the enthusiastic and dedicated peer mentors: Amber Arquilevich, Jordan Crayton, Autumn Kretzschmar, Sushmi Majumder, Hannah Mitchell, Liam Monahan, Paige Phillips, and Chris Yeung.

Many thanks to our Communication Student Advisory Board

Comm at ICA

We had a remarkably strong showing at the annual conference of the International Communication Association.

• Communication about Sensors and Communication through Sensors: Localizing the Internet of Things in Rural Communities, Talia Berniker & Lee Humphreys

• Data Mobility, Privacy and Ethics: Where Do Qualitative Data “Live”? Lee Humphreys

• Discursive Objection Strategies Used in Online Comments: Developing a Classification Schema and Validating Its Training, Ashley Shea, Natalie Bazarova, Winice Hui, Chau Tong & Drew Margolin

• Dyadic and Longitudinal Influences of Sexual Communication on Relationship Satisfaction, Intimacy, and Daily Affect among Same-Sex Male Couples, Tianen Chen.

• The Effects of Vaccine Efficacy Information on Vaccination Intentions through Perceived Response Efficacy and Hope, Jiawei Lu.

• Environmental Issues Are Global Issues: But Do Environmental Communication Journals Reflect This? A Publication Review, Sohinee Bera, Amanda Vilchez & Roxana Muenster

• Evaluating the Effect of Social Media TestDrive, the Experiential-Learning Intervention, on Social Media Literacy, Natalie Bazarova

• Examining Practices of Transparency and Accessibility by International Fact-Checking Networks on COVID-19, Chau Tong.

• Exposure to Scanned Information and Support for Regulations on Tobacco Products among U.S. Youth and Young Adult Smokers and Vapers, Kwanho Kim

• How the Public Perceives Media Representations of Scientific Preprints, Rebekah Wicke.

• In Sickness and in Health: A Scoping Review on the Clinical Applications of Social Virtual Reality, Stephanie Belina & Andrea Stevenson Won

• Larry Gross: Dedications and Reflections on the Field of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Studies, Katherine Sender

• Media Literacy Interventions Don't Work for Everyone: Understanding the Moderation Effect of Skepticism on Combating Misinformation, Inhwan Bae.

• The Moral Politics of Authenticity in Platform Labor, Brooke Duffy

• Networked Responses to Networked Harassment? Creators’ Coordinated Management of “Hate Raids” on Twitch, Colten Meisner

• Public Awareness of Climate Injustice and the Factors That Influence It, Jon Schuldt

• Promoting Teen Pregnancy Prevention: An Analysis of Social Media Content Strategy over 5 Years, Yiwei Xu.

• Putting Yourself in Someone Else’s Shoes: Empathy Enhancement as a Strategy for Countering Hate Speech, Inhwan Bae

• Salient Visual Stimuli in e-Cigarette Advertisements: Results from 16 Focus Groups with Adults and Youth, Sahara Byrne

• Sharing Is Value-Laden: Untangling the Individual and Neighborhood Level Racial Biases in Stay Choices and Guest Reviews on Airbnb, Chao Yu.

• Time to Politicization: The Emergence and Effects of Politics on Science YouTube Videos, Roxana Muenster & Drew Margolin.

• Understanding Intersectional Environmentalists to Further Behavioral Science Contributions towards Climate Policy, Emily La

• What Are Effective Objections against Problematic Content on Social Media? Pengfei Zhao, Natalie Bazarova, Winice Hui & Drew Margolin.

Staff News

IN AUGUST 2022, we welcomed Ashlee Cherry as the new Undergraduate Program Coordinator, a position that allows her to combine creativity and data organization skills with her passion for diversity and inclusion and helping others. As the point-of-contact for 270 undergraduates, she has already streamlined several complicated processes to make life easier for faculty, students, and staff. Ashlee advises students to “find something you love and take a leap of faith, whether switching majors, changing jobs, or moving to Ithaca, NY.” She came to the department from Cornell’s School of Integrated Plant Science. She holds a bachelor of science degree in terrestrial plant ecology from SUNY Brockport.

IN SEPTEMBER 2022, we welcomed Jacky Lei as Administrative Assistant. In this position, he helps with travel, purchasing, and other administrative support, and he is the first contact for visitors to the department. Jacky comes to us from the pharmaceutical and surgical supplies industry. He holds a bachelor of arts with a double major in Asian American Studies and Linguistics from SUNY Binghamton. As a member of a marginalized community and a first-generation college graduate, Jacky is a proponent of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

More than 50 faculty, graduate students, and program alum attended the ICA “Thirsty Bear” our witty name for the Cornell Comm reception.

Time Well Spent

Awards

Graduate Student News

The CALS Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award recognizes graduate teaching assistants who have provided invaluable support to students and faculty.

Luke Dye  Emily La

The Glass Family Fellowship, honoring professor emeritus Royal Colle, recognizes students exemplifying leadership and service to the field, department, and university.

Ellie Homant  Bya Rodrigues

The Anson E. Rowe Award honors advanced and promising students demonstrating excellence in research and teaching.

Advanced: Angel Hwang  Cat Lambert; Promising: Tianen Chen  Maggie Foster

Milestones

2nd-Year Projects

• Emily La, “How Climate Actions by Other Countries Shape U.S. Policy Support.”

Above, left to right: Emily La, Pengfei Zhao, Bya Rodrigues, and Lucas Wright.

A Exams

The A Exam, or qualifying exam, consists of a written and oral examination, with topics and format arranged in advance by students and their committees. Upon passing, Ph.D. students are admitted to candidacy and begin writing their dissertations.

B Exams

The B Exam, also known as the dissertation defense, is an oral examination and the final hurdle for Ph.D. candidates. During the examination, students present their research in a public forum, which is followed by a Q&A with the special committee and other graduate faculty.

• Chelsea Butkowski, “The Everyday Politics of Extraordinary Events: Unraveling Identity and Social Media Amid Historic Political Moments.”

• Amanda Purington Drake, “Evaluating the Impact of Social Media TestDrive, an Experiential-Learning Intervention, on Youth Social Media Literacy Knowledge.”

• Salma El idrissi, “Singing for the People: Populist Sentiment and Resistance Music in Egypt and Morocco.”

• Catherine Lambert, “A Comparative Case Study of Enhanced Geothermal Systems: Interacting Imaginaries of Place and Energy in Renewable Energy Transitions.”

• Yiwei Xu, “Communicating Controversial Health Risk Issues.”

• Congcong Zhang, “Self-Enhancement, Attribution, and Cultural Cognition: Unpack Different Approaches to Understanding Attribution Behavior across Cultures.”

“I really enjoyed writing my dissertation,” said no one ever.

Sara Eddleman  Bharathy Premachandra

Colten Meisner had an incredible year.

• He published two articles in 2023. The first, “Networked Responses to Networked Harassment? Creators’ Coordinated Management of ‘Hate Raids’ on Twitch,” was published in Social Media + Society. He was solo author. He also co-published “Platform Governance at the Margins: Social Media Creators’ Experiences with Algorithmic (In)visibility” in Media, Culture & Society. The article was featured in MIT Technology Review and Business Insider

• Colten received a $1440 grant from the Cornell Qualitative and Interpretive Research Institute for his dissertation project, “Media Work in the Shadows of Silicon Valley: Entrepreneurial Labor on Subscription News Platforms.”

• He also received the 2023 Top Student Paper Award from the Media Industry Studies Interest Group at the International Communication Association annual conference.

• He delivered two co-authored papers at the Association of Internet Researchers conference: “Mass Reporting in the Creator Economy: Enacting and Contesting Platform Governance” and “The Pursuit of Platform Visibility: Algorithmic Labor and Capital in the Creator Economy.”

• And he served on the screening committee for the new “social video” submission category for the Peabody Awards.

Rebekah Wicke also had a remarkable year.

• She received the Amanda L. Kundrat Thesis of the Year Award from the International Communication Association/National Communication Association Health Communication Division.

• She also received the Top Student Paper Award in risk communication from the Society for Risk Analysis.

• Rebekah co-published three articles: “Knowledge Gaps, Cognition and Media Learning: Designing Tailored Messages to Address COVID-19 Communication Inequalities” in the Journal of Health Communication; “Effects of Disclosing Scientific Uncertainty about COVID-19 Preprint Research: A Mixed Method Study”. In Health Communication; and “How the Public Evaluates Media Representations of Uncertain Science: An Integrated Explanatory Framework” in Public Understanding of Science

• She delivered the paper co-authored poster presentation “Investigating the Influence of Preprints in COVID-19 News Coverage on Vaccine Booster Intentions” at the annual conference of the Society for Risk Analysis.

• And she delivered the solo-authored paper “Examining Cancer Narratives in the News as a Tool for Reducing Psychological Distance to Colorectal Cancer in Young Adults: A Construal Level Perspective” at the annual conference of the International Communication Association.

Did you know? We made significant strategic investments in our doctoral program, implementing four new initiatives to support our graduate students. These initiatives provide needed programmatic support for our graduate students and help make our admissions offers more competitive.

• We provide fellowships and up to $2000 in research funding during Ph.D. students’ final summer of their program so they can focus exclusively on their dissertation research.

• We top off the School of Continuing Education’s salary and offer research funds up to $1500 for each SCE class taught by our Ph.D. students.

• We partnered with the University of Pennsylvania to offer summer Communication Policy Fellowships in Washington, DC.

• We are funding a summer teaching assistantship to assist with the preparation for Comm 2450.

Equity in Graduate Education Consortium

IN 2022, THE GRADUATE SCHOOL asked the Communication field to join the consortium on Equity in Graduate Education in order to focus on supporting the advancement of equity-minded and inclusive mentoring practices, a goal very much in line with ours. In the last few years, we’ve endeavored to diversify our applicant pool and view applications holistically with the aim of a more diverse cohort. The next step was to develop the mentoring skillset to better support a more diverse group of students, skills the consortium provided. As field chair, Katherine Sender assembled a team, led by herself, and consisting of Joanna Alario, Steven Hilgartner, Bruce Lewenstein, Jeff Niederdeppe, and Andrea Stevenson Won. After attending workshops (Introduction to Equity-Minded Mentoring, Fostering Wellbeing in Racialized Mentoring Environments, and Building a Culture of Well-Being), the team identified six actions for immediate implementation and later implementation in the 2023–2024 academic year.

• Each fall, faculty will complete a mentorship agreement with their students.

• Each spring, the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) and Graduate Field Assistant (GFA) will meet with first-year grad students to discuss mentorship processes.

• We updated the field handbook's “Best Practices” webpage with information on mentorship processes, finding mentors, and mutual expectations.

• We are reframing the biannual field meeting to focus on mentorship. Before the review of students, we will spend 30 minutes discussing an aspect of mentorship, taking the mentorship agreement templates as a start. Other topics may include: how to model and scaffold independent research; collaborating; working towards a growth mindset for advisors and advisees; and finding appropriate boundaries between care and professionalism (biannually).

• We will use some of our dedicated time at the annual retreat to workshop our initiatives.

• In collaboration with the Graduate School’s Careers beyond Academia program (2025–2026), we will develop more robust support for PhD graduates pursuing jobs outside of academia.

Ph.D. Graduates above, left to right: Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang, Chelsea Butkowski, Joanna Alario (proud Graduate Field Administrator!), Salma El idrissi, and Catherine Lambert.

Strategic Plan

THROUGHOUT THE 2022–2023 ACADEMIC YEAR, we developed and formalized a departmental strategic plan. Viewing this as an opportunity to establish priorities and explore methods for completing them, we worked with Pamela Strausser, a Cornell expert on strategic plan creation and execution. After a brainstorming and collective input phase, we identified four areas for strategic development: Curriculum; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Engagement and Extension; and Tenure and Promotion. A task force for each area met for several months to generate ideas, grapple with challenges, and eventually whittle the long lists of proposals down to actionable recommendations. From these dozens of recommendations, we settled on a set of initiatives that represent who we are and who we want to be, and best exemplify our values. Some we have already implemented; some are in process; others still are slotted for future action.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Curriculum

Goal: improve students’ education while creating greater faculty flexibility.

• Rethink concentration requirements to create greater flexibility for students and to recognize the convergent nature of media, tech, and communication.

• Replace “concentrations” with “pathways” with the goal of identifying students’ needs and best preparing them for their future, whether industry or research.

Engagement & Extension

Goal: examine what E&E should like in tandem with our deep commitment to the university’ s land-grant mission.

• Support faculty for engaged research, including seeking official faculty extension appointments.

• Become an engaged major, ensuring every communication student has a meaningful, engaged learning experience.

• As part of becoming an engaged major, we want all students to take a community-engaged learning course; apply classroom learning in an industry or non-profit internship; and take advantage of global-learning opportunities, such as semester and short-term study abroad programs in one of Cornell’s 12 Global Hubs.

Goal: enhance diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice (DEI-SJ) in our teaching, research, and work practices.

• Better publicize our efforts via media channels and throughout teaching.

• Create faculty groups for reviewing syllabi to ensure attention to DEI-SJ.

• Develop additional research and teaching assistant opportunities in support of historically marginalized students.

• Create opportunities for faculty to take on new DEI-SJ-related initiatives, like prison education.

Tenure & Promotion

Goal: rethink our tenure and promotion processes to make our values explicit both to junior faculty and to external reviewers.

• Develop department-specific guidelines for tenure and promotion to address specifically questions of collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and engaged research.

• Communicate and clarify our department’s tenure and promotion criteria to faculty candidates and external reviewers.

Too Heavy-Handed?

Faculty and Academic Staff News

• DIANE BAILEY was a founding team member on Cornell’s first Artificial Intelligence Institute, AI-CLIMATE. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the project seeks to develop climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices. This $20 million, five-year award is split among Cornell, the University of Minnesota, and Colorado State University, with 15 Cornell researchers involved.

• She was also a founding team member on Cornell’s first USDA Farm of the Future, a $4.3 million, four-year award aimed at developing and testing data-driven farm technologies.

• And she was a founding team member on Cornell’s $1 million, one-year NSF planning award for regional economic development. The goal of the “Upstate 2.0” project is to develop a bioeconomy to meet climate change and environmental justice objectives.

• Diane was principal investigator on the $1.2 million, 3-year NSF grant, “Big Data on the Dairy Farm.” She collaborated with colleagues at Cornell, Stanford, and University of California, Santa Barbara to study how data creation and use on dairy farms is altering dairy occupations, organizations, and industry

• She expanded Visual Communication (COMM 1300) course to 200 students, which she taught with the amazing help of four graduate and 12 undergraduate teaching assistants. (See below for details on a special visitor to the class.)

Did you know? On March 6, 2023, Dr. Temple Grandin (professor, Animal Science, Colorado State University) delivered a guest lecture to Diane Bailey’ s Visual Communication course (COMM 1300). Based on her book, Visual Thinking, Dr. Grandin spoke about the three types of thinkers: verbal, spatial visualizers, and people like herself, object visualizers. You may know Dr. Grandin from the eponymous movie biography, but she’s also a prolific researcher, international proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter, and renowned spokesperson on autism. In 2010, Time named her among the world’s 100 most influential people.

Time to Spare

• DOMINIC BALOG-WAY co-founded GEOHUB, a deep geothermal energy risk communication collaboration between Cornell, The University of Edinburgh, and King’s College London. The partners conducted a comparative survey, and organized a high-level policy event and academic workshop. Collaborators are now writing joint papers and a grant proposal to support GEOHUB.

• He published two papers on lead hunting ammunition in NYS. The collaborative research examined hunter-education instructors’ view on the use of lead ammunition, a toxic substance to scavenging wildlife (like bald eagles) and humans who eat wild game, leading to the NYS Department for Environmental Conservation updating their refresher courses to address lead/nonlead ammunition risk and plan additional actions.

• Dominic gave seven solo and collaborative presentations to academic conferences, high-level policy meetings, and NYS regulatory authorities.

• He was promoted to Research Associate!

• MONICA CORNEJO designed three studies that examine immigrant communities, e.g., undocumented college students and formerly detained immigrants (see right).

• She published a first-authored article in the Journal of Applied Communication Research: “A Latent Profile Analysis of Undocumented College Students’ Advocacy Communication Strategies: The Relationship between Communication Advocacy and Mental Health.”

• As part of a collaborative project, Monica visited detained immigrants in Louisiana and provided them with know-your-rights information. During the visit, she witnessed violence from prison staff and ICE officers. In response, the partners are advocating for detained immigrants.

• She is revising two dissertation chapters for publication in Communication Monographs and Annals of the International Communication Association

In a remarkable first year, Monica received three grants totaling $160,000.

 She won a Just Futures Team Research Grant to study the implications of U.S. immigration detention centers on current and former detainees.

 She received Migrations Initiative and Cornell’ s Qualitative & Interpretive Research Institute grants to study undocumented students post-Covid.

Did you know? Comm alumni had a strong showing at the conference on Public Communication of Science & Technology (Rotterdam). Dominique Brossard Ph.D. ‘02 (professor, University of Wisconsin Madison) delivered the keynote address. Hepeng Jia Ph.D. ‘19 (professor, Soochow University) was among the commentators. In a panel arguing the primacy of audience or goals in science communication, Bruce Lewenstein (professor, Cornell) debated John Besley Ph.D. ‘06 (professor, Michigan State University).

Mark Savary (faculty advisor, Cornell’s Science Comm and Public Engagement minor) described it as an Obi-Wan Kenobi vs. Anakin Skywalker-level battle.

• LEE HUMPHREYS spent last year co-editing a special issue on sensor-mediated communication in one of our top journals, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. This collaboration with colleagues from around the world brings together some of the most cutting-edge research exploring how sensors have become an integral part of our mediated communication environments. The research comes out of a project funded by the National Science Foundation on smart and connected communities.

• She noted her pride in leading our new strategic plan (see pg. 16).

• She completed her term as inaugural director of the Qualitative & Interpretive Research Institute within Cornell’s Center for the Social Sciences. During her three-year term, she guided the institute in providing research grants to more than a hundred qualitative social scientists across eight colleges.

• As of July 1, Lee is the faculty lead for Cornell’s Danish Global Hub. She is very excited to take on this role and help to strengthen global learning and research exchange in Comm and across the university. In her own words, “I believe in the Global Hubs mission and am excited to be part of it.”

Lee delivered an invited lecture at Erasmus University (Rotterdam) entitled “Integrating Open Science and Qualitative Methods.” In the lecture, she explored what open science can learn from qualitative methods and what qualitative methods can learn from open science.

• NEIL LEWIS, JR., received the Early Career Award from the International Communication Association.

• And he was selected as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

• He graduated his first Ph.D. students.

• He completed his first year as co-director of the new Action Research Collaborative. Triumphs include convening an inaugural symposium and supporting community engagement activities promoting equity in nutrition, health, youth development, and education.

• Neil was promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure!

In support of the Action Research Collaborative, Neil and his colleagues received a $500,000 grant from New York State. In February 2022, during a visit from Lt. Governor Antonio Delgado, Neil participated in a roundtable discussion where faculty briefed the Lt. Governor on research and programming that directly affects state residents. During the conversation, Neil presented the mission of the Collaborative, which he described as a university hub bringing together researchers, practitioners, community members, and policymakers to collaborate on initiatives addressing equity issues for society’s marginalized people.

Did you know? Our faculty are regularly quoted in major media outlets, including The Atlantic, New York Times, Washington Post, and Guardian on such topics as freedom of speech, social media history and trends; internet privacy and safety; health disparities; and science, risk, and environmental communication

Faculty & Academic Staff News

• JIAWEI LIU co-published four articles: “Effects of Communicating National Lifetime Risks and Screening Rates of Colorectal Cancer and Breast Cancer” in Risk Analysis; “Effects of Race-Specific Prevalence and Racial Disparity Information about Obesity and Diabetes” in Health Communication; “Strategic Messaging to Promote Policies that Advance Racial Equity: What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Learn?” in The Milbank Quarterly; and “Health Information Scanning” in The International Encyclopedia of Health Communication

• He joined the editorial board of journal Health Communication

DURING THE PAST THREE YEARS, Drew served as the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies, a role he took in July 2020, shortly after the pandemic forced the university to send students home. Despite it being an inopportune time to take the helm of a program with 275 majors and more than 40 minors, he jumped right in to guide us in determining how best to teach remotely and serve our students. As part of this role, he served as faculty co-chair of the Mental Health Report Working Group, which helped students address mental health concerns during the pandemic. He also served on two university committees: the Vice Provost’ s Roster Team for Undergraduate Education and the Advisory Sub-Committee on University Re-Opening. As a data scientist, he helped navigate the department and university through a tumultuous time using evidence-based decision-making (and a good sense of humor). We are so grateful to Drew for his leadership in the department, college, and university.

• DREW MARGOLIN graduated two Ph.D. students who received academic jobs.

• He completed his term as Director of Undergraduate Studies.

• He co-published five articles: “Bursts of Contemporaneous Publication among High and Low Credibility Online Information Providers,” New Media & Society; “Collective Information Seeking During a Health Crisis: Predictors of Google Trends During COVID-19,”

Health Communication; “Dynamic Resource Acquisition Strategies: Analysis of Survivor Betweenness Centrality Relationships after Downsizing,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology; “Heightened Scrutiny: The Unequal Impact of Online Hygiene Scores on Restaurant Reviews,” New Media & Society; and “Search Term Identification Methods for Computational Health Communication: Word Embedding and Network Approach for Health Content on YouTube,” JMIR Medical Informatics

• POPPY MCLEOD won an inaugural Mentored Summer Research Grant from the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.

• The Kroch Library published an article on a class activity Poppy developed for her Advanced Communication Theory course (COMM 6810). To demonstrate that communication is mediated and assisted by materials objects, she took the class on a field trip to the Archives, which recently acquired The Civilization of Lihuros materials, documentation of an imaginary archaeological civilization.

• She is a co-principal investigator on the $1.5 million, Office of Naval Research grant, “Identifying and Predicting Inflection Points in Human-Agent Teams Using Relational Event Modeling” (with Andrea Stevenson Won).

Did you know? Our faculty received an impressive number of awards this year!

• Monica Cornejo won the Top Paper Award in the Applied Communication Division at the 2022 National Communication Association Conference.

• Brooke Duffy received the CALS Early Achievement Award.

• Neil Lewis, Jr., received two awards: the Cornell President’s and Provost’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Service through Diversity, and an Inaugural Fellowship with the Storymakers Program at University of Southern California’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies.

• Nathan Matias was named an Annenberg & Siegel Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

• Dawn Schrader won the SUNY Excellence in Faculty Service Award.

• Andrea Stevenson Won received the CALS award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Students in Independent Research.

• JEFF NIEDERDEPPE received a $5 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “Developing Rapidly Responsive CommunityEngaged Research on Media-Messaging and Narrative-Change Strategies to Promote Health and Racial Equity.” (Neil is also on the grant.)

• He co-published an important review paper on messaging to advance racial equality in The Milbank Quarterly: “Strategic Messaging to Promote Policies that Advance Racial Equity: What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Learn?”

• He also co-published four journal articles stemming from his National Institutes of Health grant on e-cigarette warning labels (see right).

• Jeff helped graduate student Yiwei Xu obtain a $30,000 National Science Foundation grant to help fund her dissertation.

• He published 17 peer-reviewed journal articles and two encyclopedia entries.

 “Examining Perceptions of Uncertain Language in Potential E -cigarette Warning Labels: Results from 16 Focus Groups with Adult Tobacco Users and Youth,” Health Communication

• DAWN SCHRADER was elected President of the Association for Moral Education.

• She also served as conference planner and coordinator for the 2023 meeting of the Association for Moral Education.

• She completed her six-year term as CALS’ Academic Integrity Hearing Board Chair.

• She was named the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies.

• She co-presented papers at the meeting of the Association for Moral Education: “Moral Principles and Practices of Predictive Policing: Overcoming Legacies of Algorithmic Bias” and “Advancing Ethical Sustainability and Global Equality in the Lifespan and End-of-life of Electronic Devices.”

 “Perceived Threat and Fear

Responses to E-cigarette Warning Label Messages: Results from 16 Focus Groups with U.S. Youth and Adults,” PLoS One

 “Challenges in Communicating the Benefits of Switching from Cigarettes to E-cigarettes: Responses from Eight Adult Focus Groups with Various Smoking Experience,” Preventive Medicine

 “Youth and Young Adult-Targeted E-cigarette Warnings and Advertising Messages: An Experiment with Young Adults,” US. Journal of Health Communication,

JOIN US IN CONGRATULATING Professor Mike Shapiro on his retirement! Mike joined the department as an assistant professor in 1987 (after serving as lecturer from 1978 to 1983). As a specialist in media psychology and the psychology of entertainment, he was a prolific researcher with ten grants totaling $1.1 million from organizations such as the National Institute for Food & Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and New York Lakes Research Consortium. He published 50 refereed journal articles, and he delivered more than 100 refereed conference papers and 16 invited presentations. He served the university, college, and department as a member of countless committees, including as chair of the department. Across a Cornell career spanning nearly 36 years, Professor Shapiro’s intellectual contributions were remarkable. And he’s not stopping he is working on a publication, is a co-investigator on a proposal with a faculty member at Hong Kong Baptist University, and has other projects in the planning stages.

Mike served a vital role in teaching Communication courses. He taught 15 courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level, developing 12 of them. It is not an exaggeration to say that his media psychology courses helped shape our department’s social science focus. During his Cornell career, he advised 49 graduate students, chairing 11 Ph.D. committees. Across these many years, he advised on average 15 undergraduate students annually, meaning he had an deep impact on undergraduate education.

Did you know? Mike won eight top paper awards from communication’s leading organization, the International Communication Association. Bonus Did you know? He served on eight faculty search committees (chairing five of them), thereby helping chart the direction of the department. Bonus, bonus Did you know? Mike started his professional career as a journalist.

• Andrea began a collaboration with Weill Cornell Medical.

• She taught Communication in Virtual Worlds (COMM 4380) in new Oculus Quest headsets.

• Andrea graduated two Ph.D. students into employment.

• She was promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure!

Andrea received eight grants totaling $5.4 million, and she’s principal investigator on six of them. On her success in winning grants this year, she said “It’s sort of tragically hilarious that six year’s worth of grant writing hit right before I am supposed to go on sabbatical, but I’ll take it (have to take it)….”

 Office of Naval Research, “Close-Range Collaboration in Diver-Agent Teams Using Diver Nonverbal Behavior and Physiological Signals”; “Identifying and Predicting Inflection Points in Human-Agent Teams Using Relational Event Modeling.”

 National Institutes of Health, “Social Virtual Reality Experiences for Hospitalized Older Adult Patients.”

 Cornell’s Office of Academic Integration, “Embodied Immersive Media for Health Interventions.”

 National Science Foundation, “Making Virtual Reality Meetings Accessible to Knowledge Workers with Visual Impairments”; “Improving Collaboration in Remote Teams Through Tools to Promote Mutual Understanding of Nonverbal Behavior”; “A Training Tool to Help Teachers Recognize and Reduce Bias in Their Classroom Behaviors and Increase Interpersonal Competence.”

 Meta, “Self-Presentation of Disability in Virtual Social Spaces.”