School of Communication professors take home top awards

Kopenhaver Center Fellow for the Advancement of Women in Communication award winners.
Kopenhaver Center Fellow for the Advancement of Women in Communication award winners.

School of Communication associate professors Twange Kasoma and John Brummette won awards at the 2017 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference in Chicago.

Following the conference, Kasoma was named Kopenhaver Center Fellow for the Advancement of Women in Communication. The award is named after Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver, dean emeritus at Florida International University, who worked to develop female academics and professionals into community leaders and visionaries.

Kasoma is one of 47 women to be named a Kopenhaver Center Fellow for the Advancement of Women in Communication.

“Being named a Kopenhaver Fellow for 2017 is very timely for me,” Kasoma said. “Having been newly tenured and promoted to associate professor, I want to start honing my leadership skills and what I learned at the Kopenhaver Fellowship Pre-Conference Workshop was an important step in that direction. I not only got preliminary advice and mentoring at the workshop, but also had an excellent networking opportunity for future research.”

As part of the honor, recipients have the opportunity to attend “Women in Communication: Moving Ahead,” an exclusive convention at the Kopenhaver Center on April 5, 2018 in Miami.

The conference will explore women’s progress into leadership ranks. Strategies for moving forward will also be discussed and the results of a national survey of the role and status of women in communication will be presented.

This study serves as an example of how our state-of-the art social media watch center can benefit our students and faculty."

John Brummette

Brummette, also acting associate dean for the College of Graduate and Research Studies, presented two papers at the AEJMC conference, including one that received a top-three award.

The first paper, titled “Experiential learning and crisis simulations: Leadership, decision making and communication competencies,” focused on the benefit to students who participate in simulation exercises that require an application of public relation theories and research. Co-authors of the paper are Hilary Fussell Sisco M.S. ‘05, associate professor at Quinnipiac University; Laura Willis, assistant professor at Quinnipiac University; and Michael J. Palenchar, associate professor at the University of Tennessee.

The research findings suggested that classroom crisis simulations prepare students, or future practitioners, by providing them with experiences that apply skills taught in the classroom and boosting their professional development.

“Classroom crisis simulation exercises are excellent examples of experiential learning,” Brummette said. “While lectures and discussions of theories and processes are important, true learning occurs when students are provided with an opportunity to put those theories and concepts into practice.”

Brummette’s second paper - and the one that received the award - was titled “Read all about it: The politicization of fake news on Twitter,” focused on how the term “fake news” is discussed in online networks and how politics factor into these discussions. Marcia DiStaso, a professor at the University of Florida; Michail Vafeiadis, assistant professor at Auburn University; Marcus Messner, associate professor at VCU; and Terry Flynn, assistant professor at McMaster University, co-wrote the paper with Brummette.

“This study serves as an example of how our state-of-the art social media watch center can benefit our students and faculty,” Brummette said.

Sep 7, 2017
Max Esterhuizen
540-831-7749
westerhuizen@radford.edu