Communication faculty, students participate at regional meeting

Members of the Communication Department from Denver and Beijing participated in the annual meeting of the Western States Communication Association (WSCA) in Reno, Nev., Feb. 15-19. Associate Chair of Communication Brian L. Ott was honored as the president-elect of WSCA and became the association’s president. Ott organized the 2013 conference, "Going Global: Communication in the Network Era."

Colleagues Stephen John Hartnett, Lisa Keränen and Patrick Dodge, along with Donovan Conley, University of Nevada Las Vegas, co-organized a one-day pre-conference on “U.S.-China Communication in Age of Globalization” that brought together scholars from both nations, including International College of Beijing (ICB) instructor Supriya Karadapuram. All told, Communication faculty made more than a dozen presentations on topics ranging from visual communication to biosecurity discourse.

Several Communication graduate students and recent alums also presented their research. Among them, Rachael Thompson presented “The Disaster of Real Experience: Transforming Identity in The Memory Thief”; Harry Archer presented, “The Denial of Equipment for a Political Third Way in Brazil,” and Nicole Palidwor who participated in a panel honoring Hartnett as last year’s recipient of the Distinguished Teacher Award from WSCA. In addition, adjunct instructor Erin Davison received top paper recognition from the Instructional Practices Division for her research on communication and English Language Learning.