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Current
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Volume 9, Issue 1 Department honors distinguished alumna, outstanding graduates, and faculty 2007 Distinguished Alumna: Brenda Comeaux-Trahan Spousal abuse counseling center discussed at NABJ luncheon Alumnus wins Emmy for public service campaign Broadcasting alumnus documents Louisiana tragedy Broadcasting class collects data on radio listeners CNN recruits Communication interns Qatar University sends faculty envoy to UL Lafayette Alice Ferguson enters doctoral program Chief engineer Michael Gervais earns degree Alumni Profiles |
In
the fall of 2007, Dr. Ty Adams and Liberal Arts Dean Dr. A. David Barry
traveled to Lima, Peru to meet with representatives of the Latin American
nation's leading private institution of higher education: La Universidad
San Martin de Porres (www.usmp.edu.pe). They met with faculty, the
university rector, and were special guests of the Peruvian National Congress
located in the historic town circle center.
In exchange, USMP representatives will be
visiting UL Lafayette in October 2008 and meeting with members of the
university's new administration, including incoming UL President E. Joseph
Savoie. Their goal will be to facilitate student exchange programs
between the two academies. Dr.
Adams is also helping to organize the 2nd Congress of the Americas in
Mexico City, Mexico (DF) from October 8-11, 2008 at the Sheraton Maria
Isabel Hotel and Towers. Its goal is to unite the Americas
under the banner of communication scholarship (http://www.mexicocity2008.com).This
conference is sponsored by the InterAmericas Council, the International
Communication Association, and the American Communication Association.
In
accordance with the visit by USMP representatives, Dr. Adams has completed
his edits on a new book titled:
Communication Shock: The Integration and Acceleration
of Everything to be published in English,
and in Spanish by the University of San Martin de Porres Press this summer.
Meanwhile,
he continues to work with graduate student, Shih-Fang Huang on securing
illustrations for a publication in nanotechnology, which promises to deliver
insights into the nascent fields of spintronics and plasmonics — particularly
how they will relate to technologically mediated communication and the
human condition. Also,
Dr. Adams will launch the communication discipline's first free online
textbook, titled: “Speech Communication: Conveying Your Communication
Confidence” at
www.textcommons.org, which is the product
of 16 independent authors. Not to be completely free of time, he
has also contracted to write a basic human communication textbook for
Fountainhead
Press (Southlake, TX) and also a business and professional communication
work for Kendall/Hunt Publishers.
D
r. Phil Auter authored two journal articles and
presented one conference paper in recent months. “Diffusion
of the concept that the Internet is good via television” has been
published in the American Communication Journal.
Also, “A study of Egyptian and American young adult parasocial relationships
with music video personae,” written with UL graduate student Erica Ashton
and Mansoura University professor Mohamed Soliman was accepted for publication
in the Journal of Arab & Muslim Media.
In April, Prof. Ashraf Galal of Qatar University presented a paper co-authored
by Galal, Prof. Mahmoud Galander, and Dr. Auter on the image of the US
as it is portrayed in Arab World online journalism. The paper was delivered
to the 9th International Symposium on Online Journalism at the University
of Texas at Austin.
Professor
Heidi C. Bordogna, MFA, produced a short documentary “Controlling
Tourette's Syndrome,” for ABC NewsNow. In
January, Professor Bordogna completed her seventh screenplay, “Christmas
Carole,” which was submitted to the screenwriting division of the Austin
Film Festival. Professor Bordogna also produced and directed, “Cajun Mardi
Gras,” a feature-length documentary produced in association with the advanced
students in the spring. She is now editing the film and will also
be submitting it to the Austin Film Festival.
She
was a judge in the student division of the Louisiana State Film Festival,
and was excited to see some very promising films from students around
the state. Professor Bordogna is currently in pre-production on a second
feature film, a narrative piece entitled, “Revenant,” a modern re-telling
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, told from the perspective of Mr. Hyde.
There will be a number of students as well
as local production personnel involved in the production. This film
is one of what she is hoping will continue in a series of projects that
generate production for Louisiana from within.
Professor Bordogna will travel to Los Angeles in August to attend the
Hollywood Pitch Festival, to promote her projects, as well as overall
production in Lafayette and South Louisiana. Dr.
Robert Buckman is making the annual revisions to his Latin America reference
book to reflect the major changes in Cuba since the resignation of Fidel
Castro, as well as leadership changes in Argentina, Guatemala, Paraguay
and other countries. He covered the November presidential runoff for
The Dallas Morning News and The Washington Times.
A retired Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Reserve, he has received orders
to report for active duty June 8 for deployment to Iraq for a year.
He is tagged to serve on the joint staff in Baghdad.
Buckman's feature writing class this spring had nine articles
accepted for publication by The Advocate in Baton Rouge. Most of the
articles appeared on the front page of the paper's Acadiana edition.
Dr. Wonjun Chung has recently published an article, “A New Era of PR
Pedagogy: The First Step Toward the Internationalization in PR in Prism,”
for Online Journal.
Dr. Chung is also currently working on three research projects. For
his first two projects, Chung is evaluating college recruitment efforts
using the Internet. One project looks at overall efforts, and the other
looks at efforts, which targets international students among United
States academic institutions. His third project is titled, “The image
of country: The 2008 Summer Olympic Games in China.”
Chung will present these projects at conferences for the Louisiana Communication
Association and the International Communication Association. Dr.
Bill Davie was named interim department head to serve in the absence
of Dr. Maher, who is set to complete his sabbatical year under the auspices
of the Fulbright program in Germany in July. Davie serves as Board of
Regents Support Fund Chair of Communication, and helped two master’s
graduates and former research assistants, Anuradha Herath and Marie
Ory, submit research papers based on their theses to a national conference.
Herath and Ory’s papers were accepted for
presentation at the annual Association for Education in Journalism and
Mass Communication (AEJMC), Convention in Chicago.
Davie
also served as a presenter, discussant, and participant at the Oxford
Round Table on International Law in Cyberspace held at Oxford University
in Great Britain. He collaborated with Dr. Lucian F. Dinu on “Television,
Weight Gain and Socialization Effects,” which Dinu presented to the
Southern States Communication Association (SSCA) in April. Davie
continues to work with Dr. Philip J. Auter in building the Department’s
partnership with Qatar University in Doha, Qatar, and has been discussing
research possibilities with one of the new faculty members of the Q.U.
Communication Department. Davie also served as an external reviewer
for a Communication program at Tennessee Technological University in
Cookeville, TN. As
part of his leadership duties in the Broadcast Education Association
(BEA) and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
(AEJMC), Davie helped organize a panel on the dangers involved in helicopter
news coverage by local television stations, and participated in the
selection of this year’s winner of the Edward L. Bliss Award for Distinguished
Broadcast Journalism Education. Davie also judged the professional
TV news entries of the Edward R. Murrow competition for the Radio-Television
News Directors Association (RTNDA). Dr.
Lucian Dinu won two top paper awards since the last update, one in the
research division of the Broadcast Education Association, and the second
in the Louisiana Communication Association. His paper on the entertainment
value of advertising will be published in the upcoming issue of the
Louisiana Communication Journal, while two more of his articles are
under review for publication in two communication journals. Earlier
in 2008 Dr. Dinu presented to the Southern States Communication Association
a paper on weight gain and the socialization effects of television,
which he co-authored with Dr. William R. Davie.
In addition, the International Conference
on Research in Advertising accepted his paper on a similar subject co-authored
with Dr. Pierre Wilhelm of Athabasca University in Canada. Dr. Dinu
also reviewed competitive papers for the 2008 conferences of the Association
for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the Broadcast
Education Association. Dr.
Dinu is chairing thesis committees for five master's candidates,
one of whom is graduating in May 2008, another one is scheduled to graduate
in June 2008, and another one in December 2008. Dr.
Dinu co-advised the student chapter of the American Advertising Federation
with Dr. William N. Swain and together they helped this organization
prepare their national advertising campaign for this year's client-Operation
Life Saver. This
semester Dr. Dinu passed the baton as faculty advisor of Sigma Gamma
Mu (SGM), the Communication Honors Society, to Dr. Wonjun Chung. He
helped SGM officers organize the latest departmental banquet in early
May 2008. With 115 guests, numerous awards, and inspiring speeches,
the banquet was a success. Dr.
Sandy Duhé presented her paper,
Public Relations and the Path to Innovation: Are Complex Environments
Good for Business? at the International
Public Relations Research Conference in Miami, Florida, in March.
Her research, which discovered a significant tie between the
number of stakeholders a firm perceives as important to its growth
and survival and a firm's ability to develop
new products and services, was conducted as part of a National
Science Foundation grant for which she served as a co-investigator
with colleagues from the UL Center for Business and Information Technologies.
Her Miami paper has been invited for submission to the Public Relations
Society of America's new peer-reviewed journal,
Public Relations Journal.
Duhé also completed a chapter proposing a political
economy framework for international public relations research and
practice with her co-author Krishnamurthy Sriramesh for the in-press
second edition of The
Handbook of Global Public Relations: Theory, Research, and Practice (K.
Sriramesh and D. Vercic, Eds.).
Her public relations campaign management class is currently working with the UL Career Counseling Center and the UL Career Services Center to design on-campus and online campaigns to enhance student and advisor awareness of the services each Center offers. As
Director of the revitalized policy debate program, Dr. Scott Elliott
brought Louisiana back to prominence in intercollegiate debate. In just
eight months the program has emerged as being among the top forty NDT/CEDA
debate programs in the country. It is the only college policy debate
program in Louisiana. The team advanced to elimination rounds and finals
at numerous tournaments this year, with one team placing fourth at the
Novice National Debate Championship. Based
on this success, the UL-Lafayette Administration awarded the debate
team $20,000 in summer scholarships so that members of the debate team
can attend summer debate research institutes in Vermont and Arizona.
The university also approved the purchase of new computer systems for
the debate team. The purpose of these grants are to improve the overall
competitiveness of the UL Debate program with an overall goal of cracking
the top twenty by 2009. The
creation of a dedicated squad room in the refurbished Burke-Hawthorne
building will also serve to cement UL policy debate as one of UL's
oldest student activities as well as demonstrate to the nation the academic
caliber of Southwestern Louisiana students. The UL debate team is open
to all interested undergraduate students willing to dedicate their efforts
for competitive success.
Visual communication instructor Alice C. Ferguson, M.S., was selected
for her second university-wide Outstanding Advising Award this year,
based in part on advisee evaluations. In addition, she received a departmental
Outstanding Advisor award from the Communication honor society, Sigma
Gamma Mu.
Ferguson has also successfully completed the department’s first senior-level
Special Topics class to be focused specifically on portrayals of diversity
in mass media content.
Ferguson previously won an Outstanding Advising Award in 2006, as well
as a Sigma Gamma Mu Outstanding Faculty Member award in 2007. She and
other current advising award winners were recognized at a reception
hosted by the Junior Division staff on April 30 at the Alumni Center.
Ferguson will also serve as 2008 Summer Department head – her second
tour of duty in this position as well, having performed the same duties
in 2007 – before leaving UL Lafayette in August to pursue Ph.D. studies
at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
The
department’s new diversity class was offered for the first time in Spring
2008. Ferguson developed original course materials drawing heavily on
the text she co-authored last year with Dr. Amber Narro, Diversity
& Mass Communication: Evidence of Impact.
Students in the class were required to evaluate mass media content and
the impact of that content critically, with an eye toward building awareness
and understanding of diversity’s role in ethically producing and presenting
media messages. Students applied their new knowledge and understanding
by completing a variety of research assignments and media content evaluation
activities.
Ferguson has served as chair of the department’s Diversity & Inclusiveness
committee for the past two years, and represented diversity-related
interests on the Search Committee in both years as well.
Ferguson and her family will relocate to the Hattiesburg area this summer
in preparation for her doctoral studies at USM.
Dr. Dedria Givens-Carroll recently presented a paper to the Public Relations
Division at the Southern States Communication Association's annual
conference in Savannah, Ga. Givens-Carroll's paper was entitled,
“Excellent or Contingent Communication Models: A Survey Reveals How
a Religious Denomination Resolves Conflict.”
She also participated in a lively panel discussion, “Positive Change
Through Negative Attacks in Louisiana's Campaign 07: The Role of
Medium & Message Valence in Communicating to Change the Political
Condition,” with participants from Southeastern Louisiana University
and University of Louisiana at Monroe. Her part of the discussion focused
on the effectiveness of negative television advertisements with a presentation
entitled, “Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler: 'Mudslinging' Political
Television Advertisements as Entertainment in the 2007 Louisiana Governor's
Race.”
Dr. Patricia Holmes recently received a full scholarship from the Poynter
Institute to attend its conference in St. Petersburg, Fla. The seminar,
entitled, “Teaching Diversity Across the Curriculum," was held
in St. Petersburg from May 18-23, 2008.
Holmes received two assignments prior to the conference. The first assignment
involved registering with NewsU to complete one of its courses, called,
“Handling Race and Ethnicity.” All participants were also asked to read
the Washington Post article on the Walter Reed Hospital Investigation,
written by Dana Priest and Anne Hull of the Post.
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Philip
J. Auter
