School of Communications faculty participate in Washington conference

Seventeen faculty members and an undergraduate student in the School of Communications participated in the 2013 conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Washington, D.C., Aug. 7-11.

Faculty participants were Dean Paul Parsons; Associate Deans Don Grady and Kenn Gaither; Associate Provost and professor Brooke Barnett; associate professors Rich Landesberg, Byung Lee, Barbara Miller, Glenn Scott, Amanda Sturgill and Frances Ward-Johnson; assistant professors Lucinda Austin, Vanessa Bravo, Dan Haygood, Julie Lellis, Phillip Motley and Qian Xu; and adjunct professor Dan Shaver. The student was Rajat Agarwal of Knoxville, Tenn., a rising sophomore in the Media Arts & Entertainment major.

Here are conference highlights involving Elon:

• Four faculty members became leaders of AEJMC divisions and interest groups for 2013-14. Byung Lee is Head of the Visual Communication Division, Amanda Sturgill is Vice Head of the Communication Technology Division, Frances Ward-Johnson is Vice Head of the Minorities and Communication Division, and Glenn Scott is Vice Head of the Participatory Journalism Interest Group (formerly known as Civic and Citizen Journalism).
• Lucinda Austin received first place for outstanding research poster from the Public Relations Division and the division’s “SuPRstar Award” for outstanding teaching.
• Amanda Sturgill and Phillip Motley received second place from AEJMC’s Standing Committee on Teaching for research on teaching for their paper on cultivating a professional ethic in covering marginalized populations by learning about the poor through service learning.
• Student Rajat Agarwal and Amanda Sturgill presented their research on microblogging the news when Twitter is the only option. Sturgill also presented a paper in the Great Ideas for Teaching session.
• Barbara Miller, Qian Xu and Brooke Barnett presented a research paper on the persuasion knowledge model and electronic word-of-mouth.
• Vanessa Bravo presented research on communicating voting rights to Diaspora communities in El Salvador and Costa Rica.
• Dan Haygood presented research on the story behind the early broadcasting and sponsoring of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball.
• Qian Xu and a colleague from Nanjing University in China presented research on the use of social network sites, political efficacy and civic engagement among Chinese college students.
• Barbara Miller and Julie Lellis presented research on marketplace advocacy messages by corporations and industry trade groups.
• Lucinda Austin and colleagues from Maryland and Virginia Commonwealth presented research on how senior crisis communicators define organizational crisis recovery.
• Paul Parsons participated in a panel on assessment of student learning and, as a member of the Accrediting Council, presented an accreditation report at the business meeting of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication.
• Rich Landesberg was a panelist during a workshop on best practices for student-produced news.
• Barbara Miller was a panelist in a session on teaching integrated marketing communications within a communications curriculum.
• Dan Shaver was a panelist of a Professional Freedom & Responsibility session on the business model of the future newspaper that he predicts will include multiplatform ad sales and subscriptions on mobile devices.
• Don Grady participated in a session on the future of the journalism and mass communication surveys of program enrollment, faculty hiring and employment of new graduates.
• Byung Lee presided at a workshop on Q methodology, Amanda Sturgill presided at a research session of the Religion and Media Interest Group, and Lucinda Austin moderated a teaching panel on ethics in a changing media climate.

Seven Elon faculty members served as discussants in research sessions: Vanessa Bravo, Dan Haygood, Phillip Motley, Glenn Scott, Amanda Sturgill, Frances Ward-Johnson and Qian Xu.