News from the School of Communication and Information, October 2020

October 2020

Dean's Note

As I write this, we are midway through the fall semester, taught remotely, and eight months into the full-scale pandemic. It has been tough for all of us, in different ways.

Faculty reimagined courses so they work online; this has involved a considerable amount of effort, much of it over what we used to call summer vacation.

Staff dealt with new roles, supporting the massive pivot of teaching delivery, managing demanding new financial processes, advising students through a range of novel crises, and learning how to make this work remotely. In all cases, the challenges have been exaggerated with necessary childcare and looking after the vulnerable.

Our students' lives have been upended by the changes of the last few months—their experiences this semester have been very far away from what they might have hoped for this time last year. It is a truism of the pandemic that it exacerbates existing inequalities, and that is the situation that we feel close to home, as well as more broadly. It is a tribute to the patience of students and the efforts of faculty and staff that the semester has still been a success. Despite the challenges, truly excellent teaching is being delivered, and we should be proud of that. I know I am.

As if managing the effects of the pandemic was not enough, we are in the final stages of an intensely contested presidential election. It is likely that the election result will take time to be clear, and it may be contested. At the same time, I am delighted that so many SC&I faculty are using their expertise to help us, and the broader community interpret and make sense of this election. Six of our faculty experts are on the Rutgers Communications and Marketing list, “Expert Commentary: 2020 Presidential Election”—Mark Beal (Elections/Voter Action and Youth Vote), Lauren Feldman (Politics/Politics and Media), David Greenberg (Elections/American Politics), Britt Paris (Elections/Misinformation), Brent Ruben (Politics/Leadership), and Itzhak Yanovitzky (Health Care/Opioid Crisis).

Looking forward, we anticipate great things for the new Master of Health Communication and Information program. The program’s focus on the communication, information, and media aspects of health-related policies and practices is critically relevant. We are excited to have our first group of enrolled students in January 2021.

Stay well and healthy,

Jonathan Potter, Dean

Fulfilling our Mission during the 2020 Pandemic

All of us can be incredibly proud of the response and performance of the School of Communication and Information over the past eight months during the coronavirus pandemic.

With very little notice last spring, our full- and part-time faculty and teaching assistants transitioned campus classes to remote learning and our staff redesigned all operations to work remotely. In every area of the school people demonstrated tremendous dedication and creativity to assure the teaching, research, and work of the school would continue as smoothly as possible.

For many years, our IT Services group has prepared for business continuity during a crisis—of course given our location we always thought that would be a hurricane or flood! But the technical infrastructure and protocols already in place at SC&I before last year allowed everyone to pivot quickly when it became necessary.

Our remote teaching has used both real-time tools such as Zoom and asynchronous platforms such as Canvas to support student learning and success. While we have many faculty who have years of experience teaching online, our Instructional Design and Technology team gave support to many instructors for whom remote teaching was a new experience. The completion of spring classes involved a great deal of invention in the moment; the preparation for fall remote teaching involved thousands of hours of hard work to assure that students would have a full educational experience when classes started on September 1.

Undergraduate and graduate students have long used email and phone to obtain advising remotely, but in March, SC&I’s Office of Student Services added live chat to its routine to make sure all students could reach them. COVID-19 hit just before pre-registration for fall, a typically high-volume time for advising; combining that with helping students face pandemic-related challenges made for a very intense end of the semester. This fall, using our Salesforce customer relationship management tracking tool, we have reached out to make sure new students are feeling situated despite the unusual circumstances. Rutgers received CARES Act money to support students with COVID-19-related emergencies and is a national leader in how much of that funding it was able to distribute. (Article continues via the link below.)

Karen Novick, Associate Dean for Administration

Read Full Note

News Briefs

Jonathan Potter Reappointed as Dean of the School of Communication and Information

SC&I Faculty on the Rutgers List “Expert Commentary: 2020 Presidential Election”

Rutgers Science Communication Initiative Aims to Position Rutgers as a Leader in Science Communication

Expressing Negative Emotions May Benefit Gynecological Cancer Patients, According to New SC&I Research

View All News

Research News

Tawfiq Ammari tells SC&I about his research that focuses on the interplay between technological and social role change.
Marya Doerfel and former SC&I faculty member Jennifer Gibbs co-edited a new book, “Organizing Inclusion: Moving Diversity from Demographics to Communication Processes.”
Research by J. Sophia Fu and Renwen Zhang of Northwestern University found that university students post more private information to Facebook when under stress.
A SC&I research team led by Sunyoung Kim is working with CINJ to develop a patient portal for leukemia patients.
Research gleaned from a survey developed by Vikki Katz and Amy Jordan on how college students manage remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic was featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Some Colleges Planned Early for an Online Fall. Here’s What They Learned.”
Vikki Katz’s article for Medium, “Left To Their Own Devices,” featured Luna Laliberte, a Comm major at SC&I. Katz and Laliberte were featured in a Chronicle virtual event, “What Students Wish Their Professors Knew.”
Chenjerai Kumanyika and Khalil Gibran Muhammad authored, “The Origins of Policing in America” for The Washington Post.
E.E. Lawrence’s research on the critical need to develop a new definition for diverse books was published in two papers: “The Trouble with Diverse Books, Part I: On the Limits of Conceptual Analysis for Political Negotiation in Library & Information Science” and “The Trouble with Diverse Books, Part II: An Informational Pragmatic Analysis.”
Katherine Ognyanova co-authored a study, The COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public's Policy Preferences Across States.
Caitlin Petre’s co-authored paper, “Making Peace with Metrics: Relational Work in Online News Production,” explored the impact of metrics on the media industry and journalistic practice.
Research by Marie L. Radford and doctoral student Diana Floegel on scholarly identity and social networking sites was published in the Journal of Documentation.
Yonaira Rivera tells SC&I about her research exploring ways social media can be used to improve community health and her community-based participatory research.
The Rutgers Office of Research and Economic Development, University Research Council Grant has awarded funding to six SC&I faculty members for new research: Marija Dalbello, J. Sophia Fu, Amy Jordan, Vikki Katz, Deepa Kumar, and Rebecca Reynolds.
Charles Senteio investigated if misinformation and mistrust may result in fewer COVID-19 vaccinations among minority populations.
Megan Threats researches how leveraging informatics to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities in sexual and gender minority communities of color.
Maria Venetis explores resilience-promoting communication within romantic relationships, supportive communication patterns in managing cancer, and provider-patient interactions.
DJ Woo researches how communication enables collaboration and membership negotiation within and/or between organizations.
Read all faculty COVID-19 coverage in the media.

Around the School

Leanne Barclay-Platenburg presented on the importance of building a broad global framework of reference at the 17th Annual STS Forum Meeting.
Mark Beal’s opinion piece, “Gen Z: Vote Like Your Future Depends On It,” was published in The Star-Ledger.
Jack Bratich explained QAnon in a Rutgers Today article and received the "Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring Award" by the Rutgers School of Graduate Studies.
Mary Chayko was reappointed Honors College Faculty Fellow in Residence for 2020-2021.
Doctoral student Diana Floegel was named recipient of the Emerging Researcher Award by the Social Informatics Special Interest Group at ASIS&T (SIG SI).
Kaitlin Costello and Doctoral student Diana Floegel named recipients of ASIS&T's SIG USE Early Career Best Paper Award.
Marija Dalbello delivered a keynote, “Cultures Within Cultures of the Book, the History of Print Culture in a Diverse America,” for the Danky/Pawley Symposium, Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 15-16, 2020. (Virtually)
Ralph Gigliotti opinion piece, "The Impact of COVID-19 on Department Chairs," was published in Inside Higher Ed.
Juan Gonzalez was featured in a Rutgers Foundation article.
David Greenberg was interviewed by The Washington Post, "A Joe Biden Biography with a Few Surprises."
JMS students produced the fall 2020 edition of Kairos, “What’s at Stake: How the elections will influence our future.”
An extract from Naomi Klein’s book, “THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING: Capitalism vs the Climate,” was featured in The Guardian’s series on the climate crisis.
Nancy Carol Kranich is moderating: "Embracing Our Diversity: Coming Together Against Bias," a virtual East Brunswick community dialogue.
Deepa Kumar was quoted in The New York Times article, "5 Professors Sue Rutgers, Saying It Shortchanges Women on Pay."
Jeffrey Lane was named a “Select Honoree” during the 2019-2020 Chancellor’s and Provost’s Awards for Faculty Excellence ceremony hosted by Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Nikolaos Linardopoulos was quoted in a Rutgers Today article, "Pandemic Shapes Rutgers Move to Online Learning for State's Contract Tracers and More."
Calandra Lindstadt has joined SC&I as a postdoctoral associate on Project ASPEN.
The Master of Communication and Media Program reaches milestones with enrollment figures at a 15-year high.
Doctoral student Christoph Mergerson and Qun Wang, Ph.D. ’20, were selected as 2020 Knight News Innovation Fellows by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, an institute within Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Britt Paris examined how and why misinformation has become more dangerous and widespread than ever in "What Happens Next" podcast.
Doctoral student Connie Pascal was quoted in the Hemp Industry Daily, “Hemp Businesses Look to Blockchain to Provide Transparency to Customers.”
Rebecca Reynolds is quoted in The Star Ledger article, "Some NJ Students Didn't Learn for 6 Months. How Long Will it Take them to Recover?"
Brent Ruben’s opinion piece, “We Need to Pick a Leader, Not the Winner of a Reality TV Show,” was published in The Star-Ledger.
Vivek Singh was invited to join the North Jersey Anti-Bullying Task Force, spearheaded by U.S. Congressman Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) and led by Jane Clementi.
Doctoral student Luxuan Wang was awarded NCA’s Donald P. Cushman Memorial Award.
Khadijah White moderated a discussion with Ibi Zoboi and Yusek Salaam about their new YA novel-in-verse, “Punching the Air,” as part of the Maplewood Library Ideas Festival.
Annenberg School for Communication professor Sarah J. Jackson will lead studies on Black voices in politics as co-director of the Media, Inequality, and Change Center with co-directors and founders Todd Wolfson and Victor Pickard.
SC&I attended ASIS&T 2020.
SC&I welcomes Ph.D. applications for fall 2021.
SC&I shares a new video about our Gender and Media minor.
SC&I shares a new video about our Digital Communication, Information, and Media minor.
SC&I shares a new video about our Ph.D. program.

Alumni News

Alumni are featured in Career Talks on SC&I’s YouTube channel. Interviews include: Shady Beshai, ITI ’19, MI ‘20; Andrea Simzak Levandowski, MLIS '08; Anusha Muralidharan, MI ‘19; Peter Sutton, MI ‘19; and Beth Rizzotti, MLS ’91.
Radwa Ali, MI ’11 , the director of the Roxbury Public Library, has been named the recipient of the American Library Association’s 2020 Gale, A Cengage Company Financial Development Award.
Alumna Whitney Pennington Rodgers, JMS '07, hosted Critical Conversations as current affairs curator for TED.
Recent Digital Asset Management (DAM) graduate Vivian Procopio shared her takeaways from the certificate program.