Faculty and students from Illinois State University’s School of Communication received national awards during the annual National Communication Association (NCA) convention held in Las Vegas, Nevada, in late November.
Emertius professor of Communication William Cupach, along with co-author Brian Spitzberg of the School of Communication at San Diego State University, received the Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Book Award from the Interpersonal Communication Division of the NCA. The award recognizes their work, The Dark Side of Relationship Pursuit: From Attraction to Obsession and Stalking (2nd ed.) published by Routledge in 2014. The achievement will be recognized with a spotlight panel at the 2016 NCA convention in Philadelphia.
Cupach was also recently granted a fellowship from the International Association for Relationship Research (IARR), in recognition of his “sustained and eminent contributions to the Science of Relationships, and for significant contributions to IARR.”
Associate Director and Coordinator of Public Relations Peter Smudde received the 2015 Outstanding Textbook Award from NCA’s Public Relations division. Smudde’s textbook, Managing Public Relations: Method and Tools for Achieving Solid Success, was published by Oxford in 2014.
Interim Executive Director of the School of Communication Steve Hunt and Graduate Studies Coordinator Kevin Meyer, along with School of Communication alumni David Novak and Julie Semlak, received the 2015 Distinguished Article Award from NCA’s Basic Course Division. This award was presented for their 2005 article, “Reaching Out to Students in the Basic Course: What Research Tell Us about Pedagogy in the Basic Course,” published in the Basic Communication Course Annual. The Distinguished Article Award recognizes one outstanding published scholarly article that contributes significantly to the administrative, delivery, or curricular aspects of the introductory communication course.
Alumnus Caleb Malik ’15, won the Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award presented by NCA’s Master’s Education Section. This award recognized Malik’s thesis titled The Role of Perceived Motivation for Self-Disclosure and Self-Disclosure Appropriateness in Employee Liking for Supervisor. Another graduate of our master’s program, Kody Frey ’15, received the Top Student Paper Award from NCA’s Basic Course Division for his work titled Peer Assessment and Use of Written Speech Feedback in the Basic Communication Course. Malik is currently working as the digital marketing coordinator at Active Renter Property Management in Phoenix, Arizona, and Kody is a student in the doctoral program in communication at the University of Kentucky.
To learn more about the School of Communication at Illinois State University, visit http://communication.illinoisstate.edu/.
