University of Arkansas at Little Rock

o Carina Cremeen, recently completed her paper on Salmonella Saintpaul in U.S. Produce: A Case Study of Communication and Renewal. She presented her findings to a national audience of academics and practitioners in a web based phone conference to the National Center for Food Protection and Defense.
o Derek Wingfield, a second year MA student, received the Bronze Quill from the Arkansas chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) for an intranet website he created and two Prism Awards for the same site from the AR chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
o Greg Henderson, a first year MA student, was recognized as one of the The New Influentials: 20 in Their 20’s awarded by Arkansas Business.

Four faculty members, Drs. Driskill, Mirivel, Thombre, and McIntyre are involved in a grant through USAID. This five year grant was initiated by Dr. Nunn, Director of the Arkansas International Visitors Center. These communication workshops engaged UALR students as well as discussions with community members. The workshops focus on dynamics of intercultural communication, change and diffusion, and presentational skills. This work is a vital effort for developing intercultural understanding and peace. Faculty and students continue to be in email contact with these students. We are encouraged by the courage and determination they show as they face challenges in this war torn part of our world.

Every year, over 5,000 communication faculty and students across the nation meet at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association Conference to strengthen their teaching and research. This year, the conference met in the beautiful city of Chicago. Dr. Robert Ulmer, Chair of the department, presented his work on crisis communication and renewal in a professional pre-conference session. In addition, Dr. Julien C. Mirivel, and a previous colleague from UALR, Dr. Alexander Lyon, earned the top four competitive research paper from the organizational communication division. Their paper, titled Reconstructing Merck’s Practical Theory of Communication: The Ethics of Pharmaceutical Sales Representative-Physician Encounters, emphasizes the importance of communicating ethically in health care interactions. We look forward to even more success next year.

Three of our M.A. students have recently presented their work on crisis and renewal to practitioners and scholars at the state and national level. We are excited by the way these students carry on the department norm of making meaningful contributions through applied communication research.

• Reagen Megee presented her paper, “Arkansas’ Response to Hurricane Katrina: Effective Crisis Communication in Public Health” to to the Arkansas Department of Health. Her research was conducted to determine ways the state could learn from their response and improve future communication practices in health communication.
• Ashley Boccarossa presented her paper, “Arkansas Department of Health Coordinated Response to Hurricane Gustav: A Crisis and Communication Renewal Analysis” also to the Arkansas Department of Health. Her research documents ways this organization is using data from crisis communication to renew and improve their role in responding to natural disasters.
• Fan Ku presented his research to the National Center for Food Protection and Defense. Fan’s presentation title was “King Car’s response to China’s melamine crisis.” His research illustrates a rare case of an organization that was able to ethically and responsibly respond the melamine crisis in China and as a result renew and grow from the crisis. His presentation was done via the web and conference call to risk and crisis practitioners and researchers from Washington D.C., Michigan State University, Cornell University, University of Kentucky, University of Oklahoma, University of Montana, University of Tennessee, among others.

The Department is proud of the hard work of our Senior Seminar Capstone Class of 2009. These 14 students worked tirelessly with the faculty to under take varied case studies analyzing personal, work and professional relationships. Each case analysis demonstrated their skills in applying communication theories to critically examine and improve their own communication in their day to day lives.

The students presented their case studies in a 20-25 minute presentation to the faculty and external stakeholders in March.

One of the capstone students Camille Earl, further refined her case study and presented it at the UALR Undergraduate Research Forum. A panel of judges adjudged her research and she won the first place in the Arts section for best undergraduate research project.

Following is a list of Capstone Projects undertaken the 2009 class.

1. Social Penetration Theory: Rosie Relationships by Annacaye Clark Hickey

2. Getting Down to the Core: A Case Study of Social Penetration Theory by Ty Stacey

3. Pope, Boss, or Dad? By Jeremy Lashlee

4. First Comes Love, Marriage, Then A Baby Carriage by Mary Worthy

5. Out of Place in Your Own Home: A Case Study Analysis using Expectancy Violations Theory by Whitney Prater

6. The Office: A Cultural Analysis of My Workplace by Camille Earl

7. Coordinated Management of Meaning between Mother and daughter by Rhonda Triollet

8. My world and your world by Terri Cox

9. Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire by Joseph Mahony

10. Growing pains by Julia Graham

11. Communication in relationships: A case study of attacking the other’s sense of self by Larry Jackson

12. Messages lost through communication by Michelle Broadway

13. On my own two feet with Christianity by Diana Benson

14. Analyzing the sister-sister relationship by Alisha Williams

Recent Graduate Student Projects

We could never do enough to honor the work of our students. The titles below provide snapshots into the diversity, value, and quality of our student final projects. You might want to contact us to learn more about a given project. Furthermore, you might have interest in engaging our students in a project in your organization.

• Jacob Jenkins-The Role of Postmodern Communication in a Modern/Pre-modern Organization
• Daniel Mcpherson-Diffusing an Innovation: The Role of Opinion Leaders in Recruiting
• Ashley McDaniel-Encouraging Student Persistence through the Student Driven Model: Applying a Communication Lens
• Katie Prince-An Analysis of Control and Rewards in an Online Community
• Alyssa Grace Milner-A Study of Ethical Values and Communication at MEO

Dr. Dale Brashers was recently promoted to Chair of the Department of Communication as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Our applause! Dale completed our M.A. program in 1988. His project was titled: Communicating About Social Change: Adolescents and AIDS. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. His current work reflects the interest in had in our program in that he continues to examine the role of communication in the management of health and illness for persons living with HIV or AIDS. One NIH project (National Institutes of Health) has the goal of developing and testing an uncertainty management intervention in which individuals who are newly-diagnosed with HIV will learn communication skills (e.g., self-disclosure, physician-patient communication, information search) from a peer educator. A related research project focuses on the development of self-advocacy skills for HIV-infected individuals. We are proud of you Dale and the way you represent the promise and potential of this discipline to improve life for others.