Burke-Hawthorne Hall Renovations Making Progress

UL Lafayette alumnus speaks about diversity

UL Lafayette, Qatar University communication programs form academic partnership

Davie, Auter attend AUSACE Conference

PR sequence enrollment at all-time high

UL debate members place among top five speakers

Faculty News:

Davie appointed interim department head for communication

Buckman visits Guatemala

Maher teaches in Germany

Ferguson named Outstanding Faculty Member

Auter Attends AEJMC and Synergy Convention

New Faculty Profiles:

Dr. Dedria Givens-Carroll

Heidi Bordogna

Alumni Profiles:

Anthony Cangemillo

New Graduates

Alice C. Ferguson, M.S., instructor of visual communication, was named the department’s Outstanding Faculty Member by Sigma Gamma Mu, the communication students’ honor society. The award was presented along with other departmental honors at the annual Spring Banquet in April 2007. Ferguson previously received a “Teacher of the Week” award from UL Lafayette sororities and a campus-wide outstanding advising award in 2006 as well.

Also during the past year, Ferguson and Dr. Amber Reetz Narro of Southeastern Louisiana University, completed work on their first co-edited text, Diversity and Mass Communication: Evidence of Impact, due out in January 2008. Published by Fountainhead Press, the text offers a suggested definition for “diversity” as the term is used in mass communication contexts, and presents chapters covering different facets of diversity’s impact on mass media content, professions and education.

Ferguson and Narro launched the book with an open call for chapters almost exactly a year ago. The text is intended for use in undergraduate communication theory, journalism ethics and other courses that focus on the role and impact of diversity. The book’s 14 chapters have been authored by scholars whose interest areas range from the impacts of advertising on African-Trinidadian women, to the rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh, to the use of “Crash,” “Monsoon Wedding,” and other mass media content as teaching tools in the classroom.

In addition, Ferguson was selected to serve as summer department head in 2007, during the department’s exodus from Burke-Hawthorne Hall to temporary facilities elsewhere on campus. In that capacity, she coordinated with faculty, administration and the university’s Physical Plant staff to relocate faculty offices and departmental common areas to locations in F.G. Mouton Hall, Lee Hall and the Conference Center. Ferguson has also documented the department’s move and the historic building’s transformation in pictures for inclusion in the department’s archives.

Ferguson continues to serve as the department’s Diversity Committee chair, responsible for coordinating the ongoing development of initiatives in response to ACEJMC Standard 3, Diversity & Inclusiveness. This has included development of a new Special Topics undergraduate course to be offered in Spring 2008 that will explore diversity-related themes in mass communication content and practice.