Good News From Greenlee — November 2015

CATEGORIES: News

Greenlee School’s Villa 2016 Women Impacting Iowa State

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Lissandra (Lissa) Villa, a senior majoring in journalism and political science, has been selected for the 2016 Women Impacting ISU award by the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics. She will appear on the 2016 calendar that recognizes and pays tribute to women faculty, staff, and students who have distinguished themselves through their accomplishments at ISU. She will be recognized at the 2016 Women Impacting ISU calendar reception Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union.

When her name was announced, Villa received a tweet from Chamberlin Lecturer Juju Chang of ABC News.

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Villa met Chang during the Fall Chamberlin Lecture, and the anchorwoman immediately took an interest in our student’s budding career! Villa soon will be interning at the Des Moines Register, pursuing her interest in covering politics. Greenlee’s New Association for Women in Communications Chapter Welcomes 70+ Members It was a full-house in 169 Hamilton for the kickoff event held by the Iowa State chapter of the Association for Women in Communications on Tuesday, Oct. 13. Over 70 interested students attended the newly-formed chapter’s first event on campus. The meeting began with an introduction to the AWC and its purpose on the Iowa State campus by adviser Lisa Munger Oakes, Greenlee School lecturer, and the group’s executive board.

Following their introduction, Jana Rieker, public relations and communication director at Trilex Marketing Group in Des Moines, gave members a presentation on her experiences across the communications field. Sharing some of the challenges she’s faced throughout her career and tips for success both on and off the clock, Rieker praised the group’s formation, noting the need to facilitate such discussions among women in the field and the value in starting those in college.

Note: There is a wonderful student blog post by AWC Treasurer Sarah Curran about the new organization. Click here to read it!

Greenlee School pays tribute to retiring KCCI Anchor and Alumnus The Greenlee School has paid tribute to alumnus and Schwartz Award winner Kevin Cooney, who is retiring from the CBS-affiliate after decades of exemplary service. The video above chronicles Cooney’s influence on local, state and national coverage. In the above video, Director Michael Bugeja discusses Cooney’s impact on community journalism and his ability to find the story behind the story. Above all, Bugeja praised Cooney’s high ethical standards elevating broadcast journalism and gaining viewers’ trust.

Greenlee School to Offer Public Relations Minor A proposal for the addition of a public relations minor has been approved by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee and will be included in the 2016-17 university course catalog. The proposal, prepared by Greenlee faculty and staff, adds a third minor to the school’s curriculum. Greenlee currently offers minors in its other two degrees—advertising and journalism and mass communication. Students will be able to declare a minor in PR starting in fall 2016.

The minor in public relations focuses on the theories and methods for building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and its stakeholders, constituencies, audiences and the general public. Key topics of instruction include: public relations theory, public relations writing, research methods, public relations campaign, message/image design, reputation management, media relations; community relations, public affairs, and internal communications.

Michael Bugeja, Greenlee School director, says a PR minor can enhance majors in such disciplines as agriculture, business, agri-business, event management, the fine arts, design and “virtually any other major that deals with the public at large.”

The minor also can be a catalyst to become a Greenlee major in public relations, Bugeja said. “Students unsure of their future profession can sign up for the PR minor and, if the coursework appeals, make the switch to a public relations major or double major.”

The PR degree at Greenlee is one of the most popular in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

IN OTHER NEWS … Lecturer Sherry Berghefer reports that Greenlee graduate Emily Hecht recently recounted her real-world tie-in with skills learned in ADVRT 497J (now 390C)Computational Communication. Minneapolis’ Metro Meals on Wheels reached out to Hecht about a freelance job for some digital advertising with billboards in the city and at the MetroTransit light rail stations. “The cool part,” Hecht wrote: “They’re working with ClearChannel for the static and dynamic billboards, just like with the Uber project! I was very excited to let the team know that I’m at least familiar with the process that it will take for ClearChannel to be able to produce the billboards, and the former 497J course had a huge help in that, even if I won’t be doing the coding. By reaching out to you guys, I just hope you’ll find it as neat as I do that the course will have real life impact and already has not even 6 months later."

Berghefer also reports that she has started a pilot study for her research into hyper-reality as part of Associate Professor Gang Han’s graduate seminar class. The study (and eventual full research project) aims to explore how people look at images and determine whether they are real and what kind of impact hyperreal images have on us.

Assistant Professor Jan Lauren Boyles—along with colleagues in computer science, political science and statistics—will serve as principal investigator on a National Science Foundation Interdisciplinary Behavior and Social Science grant. This month’s submission proposes to use big data approaches to study the policy and media agendas of American statehouses. In November, Boyles joined the editorial board of Newspaper Research Journal. This month, she also served on a panel discussion (along with Jay Newell, Pak Tavanapong and Dave Peterson) on interdisciplinary research collaboration at the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Dean’s Advisory Council this month. Boyles is also reviewing manuscripts for the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, as well as papers for the upcoming International Communication Association’s conference.

Associate Professor Raluca Cozma received a small grant from the College that will support her research on the importance of foreign policy in the 2016 elections. Her American Journalism Historians Association presentation on evaluating documentary journalism history will be published in Journalism History, in an article co-authored with her co-panelists. In service, she is reviewing a book proposal for Palgrave Macmillan and two journal articles for Newspaper Research Journal.

Assistant Professor Su Jung Kim reports that her manuscript, "The Role of Individual and Structural Factors in Explaining Television Channel Choice and Duration” (co-authored with Dr. Vijay Viswanathan at Northwestern University), has been published in the International Journal of Communication.In research, she has been working on a journal a manuscript on media substitution between television and the Internet with Associate Professor Jay Newell and her Research Assistant Lijing Gao, which was presented at the AEJMC conference in August. She is starting a new collaborative research project with Associate Professor Jo Mackiewicz in the English Department that looks at linguistic patterns of online reviews and their influence on the perception of review helpfulness vs. unhelpfulness. In service, she has reviewed manuscripts for Journal of Communication, Sage Open, and International Communication Association.

An updated edition of Assistant Professor Tracy Lucht’s co-authored book Mad Men and Working Women (Peter Lang, 2014) will come out in paperback this month. “The timing was perfect for my guest lecture in Advertising Principles 230 on Nov. 13 — my thanks to Dr. Jay Newell for the invitation,” Lucht wrote.

Last weekend, Lucht presented her research on women journalists at History Camp Iowa, an inaugural grassroots conference for teachers, scholars, and anyone interested in learning and sharing historical knowledge about the state. “While there, I was happy to catch the presentation of Dr. Pam Riney-Kehrberg, professor of history at ISU, who presented her research on rural childhood,” Lucht writes. She also reviewed a manuscript for Annals of Iowa this month.

In teaching news, Lucht received an Engineering-LAS Online Learning grant to develop a blended version of JLMC 461: History of American Journalism. The course will first be offered in Fall 2016 and will combine online learning with traditional classroom instruction to create a more active, individualized experience for students.

Finally, Lucht’s JL MC 201 Newswriting students had the opportunity to hear from several professionals who are using their journalism and advertising degrees to write for public relations, non-profit advertising, and digital media. Andrea Love and Greenlee alumna April Pearson of (c)3 Marketing Group in Des Moines visited the class on Nov. 5, and Paul Soucy, credit cards editor for NerdWallet, spoke with students via Skype.

Associate Professor Jay Newell notes the cooperation between Greenlee, Computer Science and Political Science on data-driven communication was highlighted in a Dean’s Advisory Council presentation during homecoming week. Jan Boyles, Wallapak Tavanapong (Computer Science), Dave Peterson (Poli Sci) and Newell discussed the research and teaching components of the programs with a room full of professionals, academics and alumni.

Already had your fill of caucus ads? The Greenlee/Computer Science/Political Science group will be helping Des Moines Register content coach Jeff Kummer explore and interpret the colossal political ad-spend for Caucus 2016. A team of ISU students will dig out the spending records from FCC files, compile and then analyze the data. The results will be used in a series of Register articles in the run-up to the Caucus and general election.

ThinkSpace, the case-based teaching software developed at ISU, is entering a new phase. ThinkSpace 2.0 is now even faster and more flexible than the original. Newell presented a CELT blended learning brownbag forum on using ThinkSpace for fast and effective formative feedback.

And looking to summer 2016, a panel presentation that Chuck Lubbers (South Dakota) and Newell proposed on " Integrating specialized business/marketing topics into the advertising and public relations curriculum” will be sponsored by the Advertising Division and Public Relation Division at the next AEJMC.

Assistant Professor Andrew Pritchard began media law research projects with two undergraduates through the honors mentor program. Their work will focus on privacy law regarding unmanned aircraft and privacy protections for the media tools of human rights activists. Pritchard also successfully proposed a new honors seminar, “Media and Religion in American History,” which will be offered spring semester. Pritchard also received a high passing score on the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, an important step toward becoming licensed to practice law in Iowa and further contribute to the university’s obligations to serve the state.

In collaboration with the water and climate change (WACC) group, Assistant Professor Dara Wald submitted a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program. This research seeks to engage residents of the Squaw Creek watershed in an iterative participatory modeling initiative that will contribute to resilient and sustainable water management strategies across central Iowa. Wald was awarded a LAS Small Grant to support her research exploring the antecedents of perspective taking and prosocial behavior in collaborative natural resource management.

Also in research, a collaborative proposal (led by English Department’s Jean Goodwin and Associate Professor Michael Dahlstrom) was funded by the Center for Excellence in Arts and Humanities Symposium Grants Program: Confronting the challenges of public participation in environmental, planning and health decision-making. The symposium will feature a variety of fields that have taken up the call to develop new forms of interaction between experts and decision-makers, on one hand, and community residents, patients, landowners, industry representatives and other affected publics on the other. For further information, see https://scicomm.las.iastate.edu/summer-symposia/2016-summer-symposium/ or contact Dara Wald (dwald@iastate.edu).

Here is some guerrilla advertising work from Lecturer Michael Wigton’s Creative Advertising class on behalf of our Iowa State Daily client. Wigton notes the students were energized to see who could develop the most strategic and creative execution. The class critiqued each other’s work and voted for the "winners." Goal was to improve readership of the Daily with a message focus on the mobile app.

Electrical plugin covers around campus:

Digital news boards inside bathroom stalls:

On-campus smartphone:

Life-sized, interactive poster:

Senior Lecturer Erin Wilgenbusch participated with other Greenlee colleagues in a journalism workshop for a Russian delegation that visited the School. Wilgenbusch did a presentation on social media.

Greenlee School Achievements, November 2015 cf. November 2014

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