September 2007 Vol. 26, #1
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Department of Communication Studies
225 Ford Hall, 224 Church Street S.E.
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Editor: Beatrice Dehler
Secretary: Edward Schiappa
Notes from the chair:
We are pleased to announce that we have created an email listserv specifically for alumni of the department. We promise not to overload your email inbox, but we wanted an efficient way to let you know about timely events, to provide each of you the opportunity to stay in touch with each other, and to provide an easy means for you to communicate your ideas to the Department Chair. To sign up for the listserv. We look forward to staying in touch!
Edward Schiappa, Chair
Deborah Baker (Ph.D. 1983) is the Director of California State University, East Bay's PACE (Program for Accelerated College Education) program. It is a program for re-entry students and working adults that enables them to successfully complete their undergraduate education while balancing the demands of a full-time job and a family.
Charles Bantz (M.A. 1973) currently Chancellor of IUPUI and Executive Vice President, Indiana University has joined the NCAA Division I Board of Directors representing The Summit League at the same time President Bruiniks has joined as the Big Ten representative. He also joined the American Council for Education's Commission on International Initiatives.
Christine Bart (M.A.1985) has been teaching at the University of Paris Marne-La-Vallee for the past five years where she had headed up the Cinema Department and taught argumentative writing courses. In fall 2007 she will be teaching "The History of French Cinema" at a private English language university in Paris. Chris and her significant other have also been expanding their other career which is leading tours of Normandy and other World War II sites for American visitors.
Elizabeth Bauer (M.A. 1993) was recently promoted from "Telecom Instructional Design Senior Analyst" to "Instructional Design Lead" with Accenture Learning. She also co-directed Korean Heritage Camp for the third year.
Dawn O. Braithwaite (Ph. D. 1988) has been awarded a named professorship from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She will be a Willa Cather Professor and Professor of Communications Studies. She is the first faculty member in the history of the department to receive a named professorship form the university. Dawn also was awarded the Distinguished Service Award from the Western States Communication Association in Seattle in February and was elected 2nd vice president of the National Communication Association.
Mark Braun (Ph.D. 1990) has accepted the position of Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the College of Augustana College. He started his new position in Sioux Falls on August l, 2007. He has served the college of Gustavus Adolphus since 1990—first as a Professor and Chair of Communications Studies, and also as an Associate Dean.
Robert Brookey's (Ph.D. 1998) article "The Format Wars: Drawing the Battle Lines for the next DVD" was a featured report in a recent issue of Convergence. His chapter "Speak Up! I Can't Queer You" recently appeared in Queering Public Address: Sexualities in American Historical Discourse, edited by Charles Morris III.
Barry Brummett (Ph.D. 1978) went to the meeting of the Association for Rhetoric and Communication of South Africa and presented a paper "Global Markets and Global Systems of Signs: A Rhetoric of Style". His book Rhetoric of Style has been accepted for publication by the Southern Illinois University Press.
Kristine Bruss (Ph.D. 2005) has been hired as the Basic Course Director at the University of Kansas.
Jennifer Charpentier (M.A. 2001; Ph.D. 2006) and her husband are the proud parents of Daniel Pierce Donald Goto, born on Wednesday, July 4, 2007 at 8:48 am. Jennifer is currently the Director of Development for the Girl Scouts of Milwaukee Area.
James W. Chesebro (B.A. 1966; Ph. D. 1972) was appointed Distinguished Professor of Telecommunications and Director of the Digital Storytelling graduate program in the Department of Telecommunications at the Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, in the Fall of 2005. He also has a new article "Strategic Transformations in Power and the Nature of International Communication Theory" in the July 2007 issue of China Media Research, an essay that traces the emergence of China as a dominant source or model for international communicative effectiveness. Using North Korea's nuclear testing "crisis" as a case study, the international communication strategies of the United States and China are compared. Insofar as the pattern continues, it is expected that the basic nature of communication strategies in the world will also undergo a transformation. Chesebro's article is coauthored with Jung Kyu Kim, and Donggeol Lee.
Kathleen Ann Chisholm (Ph.D. 1993) is busy tending to health matters and cutting her manuscript "Ladies of the House: Nineteenth Century U.S. Women's Gymnastics and the Incorporation of Femininity." Portions of that study have been accepted for publication by the Journal of Social History, the International Journal of the History of Sport, and the Journal of Women's History. This coming year she will be a research scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women.
Jinbong Choi (Ph.D. 2005) has accepted an assistant professor position teaching in the Department of Mass Communication at Minnesota State University, Mankato starting Fall 2007.
Robbin Crabtree (Ph. D. 1992) was selected "Teacher of the Year" by the students of Fairfield University. It was a wonderful send-off for her year-long sabbatical. In addition to recovering from two terms as department chair, Robbin will be doing research in Nicaragua related to her long-time interests in development communication, intercultural contact, and solidarity travel.
As of July 1, 2007, John Cragan (Ph.D. 1972) will be appointed Distinguished Service Professor and Assistant Chairperson of a newly-created department, Communication and Journalism, at the University of St. Thomas. The new department will have over 500 majors.
Thomas de Ranitz (B.A. 1987) joined the William Mitchell College of Law to oversee its marketing and alumni relations programs. Tom is an alumnus from the University of Minnesota graduating Summa cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
Bonnie J. Dow (Ph.D. 1990) became the Chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Vanderbilt University effective June 1, 2007.
Bill Eadie, a friend of the department, became a Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University as a result of the split of the School of Communication into two units. Bill has also learned that he will be awarded the Samuel L. Becker Distinguished Service Award at the NCA annual convention this November in Chicago, and he would like to invite his Minnesota friends to be present at the awards ceremony on Saturday, November 17, to celebrate this honor with him.
Loren Ekroth (Ph.D. 1968) continues to reside on the "Rim of Sin" in Las Vegas, where he presents communication programs to visiting conventioneers and writes his weekly "Better Conversations" newsletter for 10,000 subscribers. In September of 2007 Loren launches his international "Conversations Coaching Clubs", a low-cost, "Toastmasters-like" program for helping people build advanced conversation skills. Details and newsletter available here.
Daniel Fischer (B.A. 2004) started a new position as a Process Representative for the Target Corporation.
George Gaetano (Ph.D. 1995) took a sabbatical from Hamline University to pursue research on how gender, race, and ethnicity relate to humor. He also presented a paper at the Central States Communication Association Conference, "A Fantasy Theme Analysis on Sons' Remembered Conversations with their Fathers", and received the "Faculty of the Year Award" in May from Hamline University.
Christine Garlough's (Ph.D. 2002) article, "Transfiguring Criminality: Eclectic Representations of a Female Bandit in Indian Nationalist and Feminist Rhetoric" was the lead article in the August 2007 Quarterly Journal of Speech.
Liz Gorman (Paisner) (M.A. 1986) joined Cone, Inc., a brand strategy and communications firm located in Boston, as Vice President for Corporate Responsibility.
Danny Grossnickle (M.A. 1985) is helping to organize a Speech-Communication conference at the Radisson in Rochester, MN that will take place from September 13-15. The conference will bring together the SPAM and CTAM groups. Robert L. Scott will be the luncheon speaker on Saturday, the 15th.
Bob Groven (M.A. 1993) is now directing the Honors Program at Augsburg College.
Joshua Gunn's (Ph.D. 2002) article, "Gimme Some Tongue (On Recovering Speech)" appeared in the August 2007 edition of the Quarterly Journal of Speech.
It is with sadness that we report the death of Carl Wayne Hensley (Ph.D. 1972). He passed away on May 6, 2007 after a four year struggle with a rare disease called Oncogenic Osteomalacia. He retired from Bethel College in 2001 and in his retirement years prior to becoming ill, taught at St. Thomas as an adjunct instructor. He also was a court appointed mediator for divorce cases, and served as a volunteer each summer at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He is survived by his wife Carol, three children, and one granddaughter.
Jonathan Hess (Ph.D. 1996) had articles published in Personal Relationships and Review of Communication, and was the inaugural recipient of the Outstanding Professor Award from University of Missouri-Columbia's department undergraduate communication student association. He also helped coach little league baseball for 8-9 year olds and traveled to the Twin Cities for Central States meetings.
Michael Holmes (Ph.D. 1990) continues to work as Associate Director, Insight & Research, for the Ball State University Center for Media Design. This full-time research position keeps him busy on media-use field studies and lab-based interface usability testing. He and his colleagues recently completed a pilot field study on in-home and out-of-home video viewing across media platforms for The Nielsen Company's Council for Research Excellence.
Michelle Horner Jackson (M.A. 1990; Ph.D. 1994) attended the Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) Bryn Mawr Summer Institute for women in higher education administration.
Stan Hustad (M.A. 1994) continues leadership of his executive coaching company, The PTM Coaching Experience, which has relocated to Tucson, Arizona. He is re-doing a book on communication and marketing to be entitled Marketing YOU in the Experience Economy: Learning the art of personal performance marketing. He also finished a book on the art of executive coaching.
Fern Johnson (Ph.D. 1974) is still a faculty member in English at Clark University (Worcester, MA) where she also participates in the Communication and Culture Program. She has been working on two different projects. One focuses on cultural themes in the discourse of advertising and she presented a paper on technology language in advertising at the 2006 Popular Culture Association Conference.
Kathryn Kelley (Ph.D. 1989) has taken the summer term off to recover from recent hip replacement surgery. She has been taking advantage of the time off by traveling, and the recovery is going well.
Peggy Kendall (Ph.D. 2004) has two books coming out in September: Rewired: Youth Ministry in an Age of IM and Myspace and Connected: Christian Parenting in an Age of IM and Myspace, both by Judson Press.
Colleen Klatt (Ph.D. 2005) accepted a position as a Research Coordinator in the Department of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Colleen will be responsible for supervising a staff of 15-20 research members and overseeing the daily administration of multiple health communication research projects including two NIH grants.
Jolene Koester (Ph.D. 1980) is starting her eighth year as the President of California State University at Northridge.
Yuichi Kondo (Ph.D. 1993), after teaching at Nanzan University for twenty-some years, has joined a newly established university, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, in Beppu (Japanese capital of hot-springs). He is a professor at the College of Asia Pacific Studies, teaching classes in intercultural communication, and he also is an Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and oversees the university's international education activities.
Martin J. Lang (Ph.D. 2005) is beginning his third year as Assistant Professor at Gustavus Adolphus College, where he will compete this year for a tenure track position. He teaches courses in media studies and video production and proudly advises several student organizations.
David Lapakko (Ph.D. 1988) is polishing a draft of an argumentation textbook, tentatively titled Argumentation: Critical Thinking in Action. He has an article coming out in this year's CTAM Journal: "Communication is 93 percent nonverbal: an urban legend proliferates".
Marty Lewis-Hunstiger (M.A. 1983) is a staff nurse and preceptor in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, and continues to work on nursing and patient safety communication. The departmental newsletter she edited for 15 years has morphed into an on-line magazine. She is also an editor of Creative Nursing Journal, a quarterly nursing publication.
Anna White Lovely (M.A. 1999) is now the marketing and brand manager for CarVal investors, an independent subsidiary of Cargill, and is president-elect of the Minnesota chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).
Laura Maki (M.A. 2006) works as a production assistant for a small, non-profit book publisher. She has been with the organization for nine months, and began as an administrative assistant, moving to production assistant three months ago. She works with the editorial and production staff on all of the books they publish, primarily managing proof-reading, fact-checking, and reviewing the manuscripts for copyright permission issues.
Jan Meyer (Ph.D. 1986) was elected to a second three-year term with the University of Minnesota Alumni Association. She also is developing a summer camp for teens with major emphasis on communication skills, and secondarily about healthy lifestyles and environmental concerns. If all goes well, it will occur in Bangkok during their schools' midterm break.
Harold A. (Hal) Miller (Ph.D., 1962) retired as the Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs at Northwestern College in St. Paul in September. He returned this winter to teach part time in the Communication Department and to develop a Center for Leadership.
Brian Numainville (M.A. 1993) was named one of the Forty Under 40 business/community leaders by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal in May of 2007. He was honored to be named one of the College of Liberal Arts Alumni of Notable Achievement earlier this year.
Clark Olson (Ph.D. 1986) took 30 ASU students on their annual summer abroad program for six weeks in May-June to study in London, Dublin, and Edinburgh. He enjoyed the London theatre and restaurants while teaching students relational communication and performance studies.
Les Opatz (M.A.1998) passed his written preliminary exams for the Ph.D. in the Higher Ed track of Educational Policy and Administration. He continues to work in academic advising in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.
Patricia Palmerton (Ph.D. 1984) spent several weeks in Scotland studying equestrian vaulting as an activity for children with disabilities.
Robert Pekurny (Ph.D. 1977) is beginning his 12th year at Florida State University where he is the Director of the Media and Communication Studies Division. He just completed the second year of a summer program in Los Angeles in which his production students intern in the TV industry. For seven years before that he conducted a similar program in London. He currently does research on how TV programs are created focusing most recently on late night talk shows.
Debra L. Peterson (Ph.D. 1990), University of St. Thomas, co-taught "Hawaii: Multi-Cultural Communication in Diverse Organizations" for the UMAIE consortium during J-term 2007. The course was created by Wayne Hensley (Ph.D. 1972) when he was at Bethel University.
Brigid Power (M.A. 2007) will begin teaching 8th grade language arts and directing the extended day program at St. Peter's Catholic School in North St. Paul this fall.
Linda Putnam (Ph.D. 1976), currently the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Professor at Texas A & M University, will be moving to Santa Barbara, California. Her husband, Tom Putnam, will be Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer for the University of California, Santa Barbara. Linda will be a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Angela G. Ray (Ph.D. 2001) published her article, "The Rhetorical Ritual of Citizenship: Women's Voting as Public Performance", in the February 2007 edition of the Quarterly Journal of Speech. She also received the student-nominated 2007 Galbut Outstanding Faculty Award for teaching and mentoring in Northwestern University's School of Communication. During 2006 she received five national awards for her book, The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States.
Deb Redmond (Bart) (M.A. 1980) continues to chair the Communication Department of Augsburg College and directs their film program.
Naomi Rockler-Gladen (Ph.D. 1999) left academia to pursue a career as a freelance writer, and is very happy with this decision. She is under contract to write a book about college majors, and published an article about media-education in the March-June issue of Adbusters Magazine. She also writes about college life on collegeuniversity.suite101.com.
Rich Rowley (Ph.D. 1992) will be assuming the position of Interim Dean of Math and Science on the Menifee Valley Campus of Mt. San Jacinto College.
Eileen Scallen (M.A. 1983) "took her show on the road" in the summer of 2007. In July, she presented a paper titled "The Art of Storytelling in Francis Wellman's ‘The Art of Cross-Examination'" at a conference on Applied Storytelling at the City University Inns of Court Law School in London. A week later, she presented a paper titled "Judicial Personae in the American Same-Sex Marriage Cases" at the Law & Society Conference in Berlin. She is now broadening her communication horizons from her tradition rhetorical approach to law with a book under contract with Carolina Academic Press, entitled Team Leadership for Lawyers. It is the first book with a mission of helping lawyers understand that they need to play well with others. She hopes to have it completed in 2008.
Maryan Schall (Ph.D. 1983) established the Maryan Schall Graduate Fellowship in January of 2007, "to pay homage to the superior education she received at the University of Minnesota and to help provide enduring support to the vital, long-term future of the Department of Communication Studies."
Barbara Sharf (Ph.D. 1976) hosted Robert L. Scott during his visiting professorship at Texas A&M in April. Barbara's been busy this year doing research with a college in the School of Rural Public Health and community health workers (promotoras) in the colonias along the Texas-Mexico border.
Donald Shields (Ph. D. 1974) & John Cragan (Ph.D. 1972) had their ongoing study, The Political Profiling of Elected Democratic Officials: When Rhetorical Vision Participation Runs Amok, which examines the effects of the politicization of the Justice Department, used by New York Times editorialist Paul Krugman in an op-ed piece.
Jenny Stromer-Galley (M.A. 1997) is a co-recipient of a National Science Foundation Human Centered Computing Grant with Peter Muhlberger and Nick Webb. The two year, $450,000 grant will fund a project entitled "Deliberation E-Rulemaking" to research ways to promote better feedback from citizens to government agencies that seek public comments when considering a rule change. The research will include experiments with different structures of group deliberation, as well as national language processing with the goal of developing a digital facilitator to help groups debate. Jenny gave birth to her first child, Isabel Faye, on July 17.
Douglas Thomas (Ph.D. 1992) is editing "Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media." He is co-director of the newly-formed Program in Digital Culture at USC, which is supported in part by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. He has contributed "KPK Inc.: Race, Nation and Emergent Culture in Online Games" to a volume about Race and Ethnicity in The MacArthur Series on Digital Media and Learning and co-authored "The Play of Imagination: Extending the Literary Mind" with John Seely Brown.
Robert Veninga (M.A. 1969, Ph.D. 1972) recently retired as Professor from the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. His career spanned 34 years at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of four books and over 100 professional and scientific publications. He and his wife Karen are actively involved in volunteer work in health care and higher education.
Sue Weber (Ph.D. 2002) is now the Associate Director for Communication within the Curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania. She and her husband are also foster parents and care for two sisters, ages 7 & 9.
Jon Wendt (M.A. 1982) will be teaching at a Cambodian University in Phnom Penh next year, on sabbatical from Century College, White Bear Lake. This is Jon's fourth Asian university appointment, the others having been in Malaysia (1991), Vietnam (1993-1994), and Japan (1999-2000).
Gordon Zimmerman (Ph.D. 1973) is beginning the last of his twelve years as Speech Communication Department Chair at the University of Nevada. He will return to teaching and research in 2008.
DEPARTMENT NEWS
Senior Faculty, Emeriti, Professional and Administrative Staff
Rosita Albert attended the International Academy for Intercultural Research conference in Groningen, NL and Amsterdam NK, June 30-July 16, 2007. She was a respondent on two panels and met with the IAIR board.
John Campbell (P&A) presented "Virtual Citizens or Dream Consumers: Looking for Civic Communication on Gay.com." at the International Communication Association conference in San Francisco, CA in May 2007. The paper won a Top Ten Interactive Paper award.
Ascan Koerner published "Social cognition and family communication: Family communication patterns theory." In D. Roskos-Ewoldsen & J. Monahan (Eds.) Communication and social cognition: Theory and methods. (pp.197-216). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gilbert Rodman presented "Same as It Ever Was?: The Future of Cultural Studies (One More Time)," at the Cultural Studies NOW conference at the University of East London, London, UK, July 2007.
Robert L. Scott toured the East, West, and North Tyrol this summer playing concerts with The Star of the North Band. He writes, "The multitudes raved. I also attended the bi-annual conference on argumentation at Alta, Utah, in August where I met a large number of U of MN grads and spread news of the department, cheer, and good will with all. Much of the conference chat, however, was about the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis and the coal mine cave-in which occurred not far south of Alta."
Amy Sheldon published "Talk as text," in Talking text: How speech and writing interact in school learning, pp. 93-112. This fall Amy will be co-teaching a seminar on Narrative Construction with Prof. Carol Berkenkotter of the Writing Studies Department. Last year Amy consulted with the BBC for their series "Child of our Time" concerning language and gender and is now featured in the U's "Driven to Discover" campaign.
Kirt Wilson's essay "Rhetoric and Race in the American Experience: The Promise and Perils of Sentimental Memory" is scheduled for publication by Waveland Press in September 2007. He will be a Visiting Libra Professor at the University of Maine the week of October 14th.
Graduate Students
Dianne Blake's chapter, "Julia Amanda Sargent Wood as Editor of the New Era," will be published in Seeking Voice: Images of Race and Gender in 19th Century Journalism, Purdue University Press.
Thomas Johnson presented "Sport and Television: Media Production Pedagogy's Consideration of Gaze Theory and the Visual Experience" as part of the University Film and Video Association Conference held in Denton, Texas.
Casey Kelley presented "Scientific Certainty and Ethical Obligations: Reframing Global Warming" at the Conference on Argumentation in Alta, Utah.
Andrew Kidd presented "The Limits of Dissensus: The Case of 'Intelligent Design' at the June 2007 Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation Conference in Windsor, Ontario.
Matthew May presented "Let us be Realistic and Demand the Impossible: Defining Kairos in Contemporary Marxism" at the Conference on Argumentation in Alta, Utah. With funding he received from a departmental grant Matthew traveled to Detroit, Michigan for dissertation research in the Walter P. Reuter library at Wayne State University.
Tony Nadler and Kristine Weglarz attended the International Communication seminar in Tampere, Finland and the Nord Media conference in Helsinki, Finland. They also went on a field trip to St. Petersburg, Russia as part of the seminar.
Emanuelle Wessels presented "Pleasure, Power, Production: Gaze Theory and its Applications to Media Pedagogy" as part of the University Film and Video Association Conference held in Denton, Texas.
Recent Ph.D. Recipients
Timothy Behme
"Authorship Ethics in Ancient Greece: Case Studies of Herodotus, Isocrates, and Plato"
Adviser: Edward Schiappa
Mariko Izumi
"Violent Fraternity: The Comfort Woman Reparation, the
Asian Women's Fund, and Japan's New Ethos of Humanitarianism"
Adviser: Ronald W. Greene
Recent M.A. Degrees
Rob Baron
"The Encyclopedia Everyone Can Edit:
The Rhetorical Framing Controversy and Implications of Wikipedia"
Adviser: Edward Schiappa
Brigid Power
"Without a Home But Not Without a Voice: An Analysis of
Newspaper Coverage of Homelessness in Three Cities"
Adviser: Mary Vavrus
Jessica Prody
"Rhetoric of the Suffragists' Second Generation:
Discourse, Identity, and Collective Practice"
Adviser: Kirt Wilson
Thank you for your "bits and pieces" for the Alumni Edition of COMMPOST. Next edition: December 2007. Please continue to send your news items to Bea Dehler at dehle001@umn.edu.