Departmental News
Graduate Student Achievements
Fourteen Department of Communication graduate students have been selected to participate in the 2008 Graduate Research Interaction Day (GRID), sponsored by the Graduate Student Government at the University of Maryland. GRID will be held on April 17, 2008 in the Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland.
Student research will either be presented in poster sessions or oral presentation sessions and the research is organized around broad themes.
Poster session participants from the department include Hua Jiang, Yi Luo, & Shuo Yao (Human Behavior and the Cognitive Mind), Heather Epkins (Public Policy), and Katie Place (Culture, Literature, & Society).
Oral presentation particpants from the department include Theresa Donofrio & Stephen Underhill (Culture, Literature, & Society), Ioana Cionea (Environmental Issue, Climate Change, & Sustainable Development), Hua Jiang & Ai Zhang (Exploring Identities), Hongmei Shen (Globalization), Lucinda Austin (History & Sociology), Jill Underhill (Human Behavior and the Cognitive Mind), and Art Herbig & Alyssa Samek (Interpreting Visual Culture and Images).
Ph.D. student Heather Epkins has been named a 2008-2009 pre-doctoral fellow for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). Epkins' project is entitled
"Drawing Red Lines: The Role of Outside Media Organizations, Routine, and Organizational Structure on Perceptions of National Security Media."
The START fellowship program is available to graduate students and those who have completed graduate school within the last five years. Those selected to be Fellows are provided with $5,000 to dedicate towards research expenses and professional development experiences to support their work in the area of terrorism studies. Along with students from the University of Maryland, 2008-2009 START fellows come from the University of California—San Diego, MIT, Cambridge, and elsewhere.
Each Fellow works closely with individual mentors, members of the START research consortium. Mentors involve Fellows in their own START-related research, supervise Fellows’ research, and help develop plans for using the Fellowship award to advance the Fellow’s educational and research goals.
