First Day as Associate Dean
Columbia, Mo. (July 5, 2016) — My first day as associate dean of Graduate Studies was pretty calm. It helped that it was Friday, July 1, the lead-in to a three-day holiday weekend.
That being said, we have been very busy during the transition. Katharine Appuhn-Hodges joined the staff in June as a senior academic adviser. If the name sounds familiar, it might be because she was the School’s senior communication coordinator before leaving to work as an adviser in the College of Engineering. We’re thrilled to have her back here. Katharine will work with doctoral students and administer the online master’s program.
On July 7, Kathy Adams (yes, that’s right, another Kathy) will join the team as a senior academic adviser. Kathy Adams replaced Katharine Appuhn-Hodges at the School when she left to go to Engineering. Kathy Adams will work with on-campus master’s students and oversee our recruitment efforts.
Kaitlin Hermann, our traffic cop/administrative assistant, has done a great job keeping things together, though she has only been in the office five months. We all are working hard to make the transition as smooth as possible for students, faculty and staff.
Speaking of transition, in April, the doctoral faculty approved four research areas centered on the strengths of our Ph.D. program. The areas are media sociology, strategic communication/health communication, media history and law, policy and ethics. The areas represent the scholarly research and teaching focus of our faculty. The areas more clearly define our program and will be used to attract faculty and students. More information about these areas will be available on journalism.missouri.edu/doctoral in the near future.
We’re recruiting and need your help in getting the word out about three new interdisciplinary positions. Two of them are for science communication. The new faculty members will be housed at the School and hold joint appointments in the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. The other new position will focus on the analysis and use of Big Data, contributing to efforts here at the School, as well as with the MU Informatics Institute and the Data Science and Analytics MS degree program. Scholars will work closely with Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, both of which are headquartered here. More information is available at MU Human Resources, Academic Employment Opportunities.
On the research front, doctoral student Yang Cheng won the top student paper award at the International Communication Association conference in Fukuoka, Japan. Her research on the interplay of news media and public relations regarding the 2014 General Motors recall crisis was one of the almost 50 papers presented by faculty, students and alumni at the conference. Associate Professor and Journalism Studies chair Tim Vos earned a top three faculty paper award at the conference for his study is on the journalistic roles in civic and everyday life.
Next up is the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Minneapolis, Aug. 3-7. A full list of faculty, student and alumni participants will be posted when available.
The Graduate Studies staff welcomes your ideas on how we can improve our program to better serve students, faculty and alumni. Please feel free contact us JourGraduateStudies@missouri.edu.
Thanks and have a great rest of your summer.
Earnest L. Perry
Associate Dean
Graduate Studies
Updated: September 29, 2020