Published: July 10, 2017

Updates from our all-star professors, researchers and innovators for summer/fall 2017.

Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design Communication | Critical Media Practices | Information Science
Intermedia Arts, Writing and Performance PhD Program | Journalism | Media Studies

Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design

STCM

Every aspect of the new studio space supporting the Strategic Communication Design master’s program was designed to be adaptable.

Located in the heart of downtown Boulder, the space can be turned from a classroom into a photography studio, event space or even a walk-in art installation, with images projected across vast, blank walls. In courses like Design Sprints, students create products, services and experiences for clients including Uber, Allstate Insurance, Microsoft and ESRI, among others.

From the tools students use to the lessons they learn working with industry leaders, SCD is a graduate program designed to evolve at the pace of the globally connected creative economy.

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Communication

  • Associate Professor John Ackermanwrote, revised and now has in-press three chapters in collections devoted to ecological and rhetorical justice.
  • Professor Karen Ashcrafthad a productive sabbatical year during which she completed a collaborative book, drafted several articles and delivered international talks, all around themes of work, power and affect in the contemporary economy.

  • Associate Professor David Boromisza-Habashibecame a tenured associate professor and vice chair of the Language and Social Interaction Division of the International Communication Association.

  • Assistant Professor Joelle Cruzjoined the department and published herfindings on social movements and indigenous organizing in postconflict Liberia.

  • Associate Professor Lisa Florescompleted her term as director of graduate studies and received the Rose B. Johnson Article of the Year award, with co-author Christy-Dale L. Sims, fromSouthern Communication Journal.

  • Professor Larry Freybecame the co-editor of a new book series on communication for social justice activism for the University of California Press.

  • Assistant Professor Laurie Griesgave a number of invited talks based on her award-winning bookStill Life with Rhetoricand completed a forthcoming co-edited collection titledCirculation, Rhetoric, and Writing.

  • Instructor Ruth Hickersondelivered the keynote address,“Raising Awareness and Removing Barriers: Communication Practices That Foster Inclusion and Engagement,” at the Rockwell Automation on the Move technology and tradeexpo inDenver.

  • Assistant Professor Jody Jahnbegan work on her $346,000 research grant, received an Article of the Year award fromManagement Communication Quarterly,had top papers at both the National and International Communication Association conventions, and successfully passed fourth-year review.

  • Associate ProfessorMatthew Koschmannreceived a Fulbright Scholars Award to be a visiting scholar at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines for the spring 2018 semester.

  • Professor Tim Kuhnserved as associate chair for the department’s undergraduate program, published a book on working and organizing (with CU’s Karen Ashcraft and University of Montreal’s Francois Cooren), and was an associate editor atHuman Relations, an international and interdisciplinary academic journal devoted to the study of social relations at and around work.

  • Instructor Jeff Motterwas part of a team at the Kettering Foundation that developed a National Issues Forum discussion guide on food access.

  • Assistant Professor TiaraNa’putijoined the department and received the Constance Rourke PrizeFinalist Mentionfor the best article published inAmerican Quarterly.

  • Associate Professor Phaedra Pezzullopublished the fourth edition ofEnvironmental Communication and the Public Sphere,became director of BoulderTalks and gave multiple talks on climate justice.

  • Assistant Professor Natasha Shrikant joined the communication faculty in August 2016 and is submitting research findings about communication and race in institutional contexts for publication.

  • Chair and Professor Peter Simonsonwas promoted to full professor, became chair of the department, and received CMCI’sPayden Award for excellence in teaching, research and service.

  • Senior Instructor Jamie Skerskiled her Persuasion & Society students in pitching communication strategies to local and global brands, including Microsoft and Skratch Labs.

  • Assistant Professor Leah Sprainco-organized a symposium on energy democracy co-sponsored by BoulderTalks, the National Science Foundation, the National Communication Association and the University of Utah’s Communication Institute.

  • Associate Professor Ted Striphasbecame co-editor of the journalCultural Studies,the flagship publication in that field, and delivered the keynote address atUCLA’s eighth annual Transforming Hollywood conference.

  • Professor Bryan Taylorpublished two essays on communication and security in theAnnals of the International Communication Association, taught a new graduate seminar on rhetorical field methods and completed the new edition ofQualitative Communication Research Methods(forthcoming, Sage).

  • Professor Karen Tracycompleted her term as chair of communication and finished her third and last year serving on the VCAC, the committee that makes decisions about promotion and tenure.

  • Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Curriculum and Programs Cindy Whitecompleted her second year as associate dean and participated in the national first-year college experience conference.

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Critical Media Practices

  • Assistant Professor Reece Auguiste’sStillness Spiritis an experimental essay film about the largest private collection of African art in Colorado and possibly the third largest in the nation. The film is structured so that viewers may experience the collection as if walking through a gallery of African art.
  • Assistant Professor Betsey Biggsis collaborating on a long, minimalist, multimedia musical performance and film using time-lapse footage of glaciers, choral composition, field recordings and interspersed texts regarding the cultural changes wrought by global warming. Florida State University recently commissioned Biggs to create an installation about women and noise.

  • Professor Emeritus Daniel Boord’sfilmContigois included in theFaculty Exhibition: 2017at the CU Art Museum.

  • Instructor Eric Coombs Esmailpremiered his latest media work at Anthology Film Archives in New York and expanded the educational, curatorial and fundraising activities of the nonprofit media organization Process Reversal, which he co-founded in 2012.

  • Assistant Professor Erin Espeliehas completed two short films,A Net to Catch the Light,which had its West Coast premiere in June at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, andAutomorphic, which premiered last summer at the Mediamatic gallery in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She is co-principal investigator for a new initiative, the Nature, Environment, Science and Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts.

  • Instructor Christian Hammonsproduced, directed and performed inTripod: Mead, Bateson, Bali, a live, mixed-media documentary about the anthropologist Margaret Mead, her husband, Gregory Bateson, and their collaboration in Bali in the 1930s.

  • Associate Professor Tara Knightreceived a CU Boulder Innovative Seed Grant for a sound planetarium project and is co-principal investigator for a new initiative, the Nature, Environment, Science and Technology (NEST) Studio for the Arts.

  • Assistant Professor Stephanie Sprayis in postproduction for her feature-length experimental documentary,The Immortals, which she shot aboard the JOIDES Resolution, a scientific drilling ship funded by the International Ocean 鶹Ƶy Program with National Science Foundation funding, over the course of 10 weeks at sea in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

  • Instructor Andrew Youngwrote and edited an article inCritical Studies in Televisionon representing counterculture inPeter Gunn(to be published shortly) and developed a new PhD history course.

hands holding a tablet

Students in the Critical Media Practices degree program develop theirpersonal style as they explore theexpressive potential of media.They make media in order to connect to and know the world.And they create and think about media in new ways while learning critical perspectives that place media practices within a broad cultural and historical continuum of innovation. Last year, students in the department created projects covering a wide array of topics and media, including a soundscape of Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall, an interview-driven social media campaign across multiple channels and a short film about three Syrian children in the Zaatari refugee camp.

Students can focus in three concentration areas (or they can build their own): documentary media, performance media and sound practices. Within these areas, students work with digital photography, videography, location sound, electronic music, web design, virtual reality and media installation.

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Information Science

  • Professor William Asprayis writing a book about the history of urban legends (especially 9/11 legends), alternative political facts and mercantile rumors that harm businesses.
  • Associate Professor Lecia Barkeris conducting research on beliefs about privacy of student data in learning management systems as well as teaching practices of computer science content.

  • Assistant Professor Jed Brubakeris examining how people share their lives through social media, collaborating with social media companies to make the internet a more compassionate place, and exploring what comes after the “user” in user experience.

  • Assistant Professor Laura Devendorfjoined the faculty in January 2017 and spoke on the subject of “Design Futures” at the European Forum Alpbach in August.

  • Assistant Professor Casey Fieslerhas been conducting empirical studies of internet research ethics and gave a TEDxCU talk in April on the subject of copyright and remix.

  • Assistant Professor Brian Keeganis a computational social scientist examining the structure and dynamics of emergent leadership within a Fortune 50 enterprise social media platform, as well as cross-cultural team formation processes in multiplayer online battle arenas.

  • Chair and Professor Leysia Palenis examining the generation of information infrastructures and the use of social media in extreme weather hazard events in projects that are funded by the National Science Foundation.

  • Assistant Professor Michael Paulrecently published a book about how data science and social media can solve new problems in public health.

  • Professor of Practice Rick Robinsonis working on a series of talks on how ethnographic research has been adopted, adapted and applied in corporate and industrial settings to design and develop new products and services.

  • Assistant Professor Ricarose Roqueis collaborating with public libraries and community centers to design and study experiences that meaningfully engage children and their families to imagine, invent and learn with new technologies.

  • Assistant Professor Danielle Albers Szafiris modeling how people interpret visual information to create more effective visualizations and augmented reality applications. She is constructing an interactive analytics system with aerospace engineering researchers to explore large image collections, which is funded by the U.S. Air Force.

  • Assistant Professor Amy Voidais studying how the demands of big data are affecting the clients and service provision of human service organizations.

  • Assistant Professor Stephen Voidais conducting a pilot study in collaboration with researchers at the University of Washington to learn how people with bipolar disorder and the members of their extended care networks use data together to track mood changes, identify triggers, and reflect on the effectiveness of medications and long-term clinical treatments.

The human side of data

Jed and post-it notes

A few years ago, a group of interdisciplinary computing visionaries set out to design an innovative information science department from the ground up. The result is one of the few programs nationally that offers a four-year degree in the discipline to undergraduates, and one with forward-thinking faculty with connections to Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and many more.

Information Science blends computing with social science and the humanities for a hands-on, interdisciplinary education that investigates all aspects of human-data interaction. Students research how people and organizations interact with technology and information. They design apps, algorithms and user interfaces. They learn to collect, analyze and interpret data. Then they apply that knowledge to their secondary area of concentration to produce a project in, for example, bioinformatics, music informatics or wherever their interests take them.

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Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance PhD Program

  • Director Mark Amerika’swork was featured in international exhibits, includingGlitchMix, not an errorin Havana, Cuba, andBeyond GRAMMATRON: 20 Years into the Futurein London, England.

  • Associate Professor Lori Emersonserves as founding director of the Media Archaeology Lab, which houses North America’s largest collection of still-functioning media artifacts from the early 20th century through the 21st century. She recently discussed the MAL at Ignite Boulder.

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Journalism

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Media Studies

CMRC graphic

In an age when a confession app can be downloaded and people increasingly share their faith through Instagram, podcasts and YouTube, the study of religion is also changing. CMCI’s (CMRC) recently received a $500,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support an investigation of the evolving nature of religious scholarship in the digital age.

Stewart Hoover, director of the CMRC, is leading the research effort that brings together scholars, researchers and practitioners to develop new and innovative tools for research and communication.Alongside their research, the project’s team will develop a new web platform designed for academic collaboration, idea development and multiplatform communication, including interactive media.

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