Tag: PhD students

Grady Ph.D. students take home UGA Graduate School awards

Posted on by Jackson Schroeder

Four Grady College Ph.D. students, JeongHyun (Janice) Lee, Taylor Voges, Jung Min Hahm and Youngji Seo, all recently received significant awards from the University of Georgia’s Graduate School. 

Each student was nominated by their faculty advisor and the Grady Graduate Office. The awards each provide recognition and/or support that will help the students complete their degrees and progress in their respective fields.

Janice Lee holding up her award.
Janice Lee received her award at the Delta Innovation Center on April 5. (Photo: Juan Meng)

Janice Lee receives UGA Graduate School Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award

Janice Lee, a third-year doctoral student researching in the areas of corporate communication, leadership and technologies, is the recipient of the UGA Graduate School 2021-2022 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. 

Administered by the Center for Teaching and Learning and sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Instruction, this award celebrates teaching assistants who show superior instruction skills while serving in the classroom or laboratory. 

“The award means a lot to me because we have been through the pandemic, and it seems to be a recognition for all of us who teach and learn in this unprecedented era of hardship,” said Lee. “I also appreciate Dr. Juan Meng, my advisor, who has advised me as a researcher and inspired me as a teacher. Lastly, with this award, I am able to strive to focus more on students’ educational experiences.”

Taylor Voges receives UGA Graduate School Dissertation Completion Award 

Taylor Voges, a third-year doctoral student researching public relations and ethics, is the recipient of a UGA Dissertation Completion Award for the 2022-23 academic year. 

This very competitive award recognizes UGA’s top doctoral students. It provides funding during the final year of study so that doctoral students can focus on their dissertation without having to be a departmental graduate teaching or research assistant.  

“The Dissertation Completion Award assistantship is such an amazing opportunity, and I will be forever grateful to the University and my mentors,” said Voges. “The Graduate School was impressed by my dissertation, and this award allows me to focus all my time and energy on my dissertation. I am beyond excited to research and work on my passion project. Here’s to setting a better public relations ethics foundation for current and future practitioners!”

Jung Min Hahm and Youngji Seo receive UGA Summer Doctoral Research Assistantships

Jung Min Hahm, a doctoral candidate researching persuasion in advertising, and Youngji Seo, a fourth-year doctoral student researching health and risk communication, each received a Doctoral Research Assistantship for the summer. This assistantship provides a $3,500 award to assist in dissertation writing and on-time degree completion.

“I am honored to be a recipient of this award! I’m in the very last stage of my Ph.D. journey, and this award will help me cross the finish line towards my degree completion,” said Jung Min. 

“I am so glad that Graduate School and Grady College recognized my effort by supporting and nominating me for this assistantship,” added Youngji. “I view this assistantship as an opportunity to improve my dissertation and complete my Ph.D. degree on time successfully.”

PhD student Xuerong Lu wins 2021 IPR-Ketchum Don Bartholomew Award for Excellence in Public Relations Research

Posted on by Dayne Young

Public relations PhD student Xuerong Lu was recently announced as the winner of the 2021 IPR-Ketchum Don Bartholomew Award for Excellence in Public Relations Research. The award honors the work of a public relations scholar and helps them connect their research to public relations practice in the professional setting.

“I was on cloud nine for several hours,” Lu said. “I called my parents who were in China and proudly told them I won it.”

Lu’s research focus is crisis communication. Specifically, she examines how organizations communicate crises to audiences on social media when conflicting information exists.

The award links Lu to a legacy of renounced public relations scholars, including two members of the Grady College faculty. María Len-Ríos, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, won the same award in 2000 and Bryan Reber, Advertising and Public Relations Department Head, won it in 1999.

“I’m glad that Ketchum continues to support this award,” Reber said. “I received it more than 20 years ago and it’s exciting to have one of our own earn the honor and experience of the Bartholomew Award. I’m glad to have Xuerong in the fraternity of winners of this award.”

“It’s a huge inspiration for me,” said Lu. “Dr. Reber and Dr. Len-Ríos are big names in the PR field. It was my dream to have my name listed with their name somewhere one day.”

In her research, Lu worked with Yan Jin, AdPR Assistant Department Head, on a study published by Public Relations Review that focused on how information is vetted when be used to manage crisis communication. Jin, who also serves as Lu’s faculty advisor and dissertation chair, also guided Lu through the IPR-Ketchum Award application process.

“Xuerong’s passion for advancing communication theory and practice via social and behavioral scientific research is remarkable,” Jin said. “As doctoral student, Xuerong has published in some of the top journals in our field and received external research funding, with extensive experience of leading projects and collaborating with scholars and practitioners in the U.S. and worldwide. She is bright, diligent, optimistic, creative and perseverant.”

Lu says the experience with a leading global public relations agency gives her greater perspective on the field of public relations.

“Such experience really opened my eyes to the PR industry, which is also really helpful to my own PR research,” Lu said. “It helps me to rethink “so what” questions in a deeper and wider manner when doing my own research.”

Lu plans to pursue a faculty position at a research university to continue her passion and contributions to scholarly work in public relations and crisis communication.

You can learn more about the Bartholomew Award and see the full list of previous winners at their website.

Haley Hatfield wins Top Paper award for research on racial bias in virtual reality

Posted on by Dayne Young

Haley Hatfield, a PhD student from El Dorado, Kansas, recently was awarded Top Paper honors from The Human Communication and Technology Division (HCTD) of the National Communication Association (NCA).

“I was a bit in shock, to be honest,” Hatfield said. “I care so much about this project and put so much of myself into it.”

Hatfield, along with her co-authors, submitted a paper titled: “Confronting Whiteness through Virtual Humans: A review of 20 years of research in prejudice and racial bias using virtual environments.”

The paper analyzes 53 studies that use virtual humans in the realm of video games or virtual reality and highlights areas where previous research did not display a historical understanding of racial inequality.

“When we interact with technology, it is easy to see it as being neutral or incapable of having biases,” Hatfield said of her research team’s findings. “It can be easy to forget that technology is created by biased humans and subsequently used by biased humans. And in many cases, these biases can become replicated within virtual spaces.”

Hatfield will present her findings to fellow researchers later this year in Seattle. (photo submitted)

Hatfield’s research is conducted in the Games and Virtual Environments Lab (GAVEL) with Grace Ahn and in the Brain, Body and Media Lab (BBAM) with Glenna Read. Hatfield’s focus is understanding the relationship between virtual reality and attitudes attributed to systemic racism and white privilege.

“I was so impressed with Haley’s tenacity and motivation,” said Ahn. “She always puts in a great deal of thought into her writing and every new draft she showed me was dramatically better than the earlier one.”

The paper emphasizes that virtual reality gives users a unique chance to feel experiences from others’ perspective. Hatfield says that opportunity makes it all the more important to be responsible and informed when portraying race in virtual environments.

“Moving forward, it will take a lot more listening from those who have been in the majority for so long and for those same people to continuously work to help uncover and responsibly dismantle systems of oppression within research and their personal lives,” said Hatfield.

Much of the research for this project occurred in the midst of the pandemic, when team collaboration was more difficult and feedback could be constrained due to distance. Ahn says those challenges made the work all the more impressive.

“She (Hatfield) is asking critical questions that force us to re-examine how we view and discuss technological advancements in communication, and I was glad that the reviewers agreed with us in seeing the significance of those discussions,” said Ahn. “We hope that this paper serves as an impetus to begin these difficult but important discussions. VR is a new and cool technology, but technological innovations alone are unable to resolve the problem of structural inequity and racism.”

This paper was Hatfield’s first submission to NCA. She will present the findings in person at NCA’s annual convention in Seattle in November.

Hatfield is in the AdPR track of the PhD program and aspires to become a tenured research professor where she can lead her own VR lab.

Scholarships help doctoral students with summer research

Posted on by Sarah Freeman

While many Grady College students were enjoying summer internships or travel, others were continuing the work they do throughout the school year—researching communications topics that often contribute to dissertation proposals.

Sixteen doctoral students were awarded scholarships this summer to offset research expenses. The scholarships were awarded from the Paul C. and Margaret B. Broun Student Support Fund.

“The scholarship funds I received during my first year of the Ph.D. program at Grady College are significant in helping me achieve my research goals and aide me in finding my identity as a scholar,” Andrea Briscoe said.

Briscoe, who is starting her second year as a graduate student, focused most of her research this summer on gender and visual media, a topic she presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference last week.

The funds offset the costs of travel to the conference in Toronto.

The Broun Scholarship helped support Andrea Briscoe’s conference travels to Toronto, her first international trip. (Photo: courtesy of Andrea Briscoe.)

Briscoe continued: “While attending conferences are the expectation for graduate students, this conference meant more to me than a line on my CV. With help through funding of the graduate program along with this scholarship, I was able to share the work I had done on gender and reality television with a diverse group of people. I was able to sit in the same room with incredible scholars and creative thinkers and learn from them. But most importantly, I received numerous calls and texts from family where they shared how proud they were of me.”

Hyoyeun Jun, another doctoral student who was granted a scholarship from the Broun fund, also conducted research this summer that was presented at the AEJMC conference and will serve as a foundation for her dissertation.

Her research focuses on developing the most effective messages to overcome the stigma surrounding HPV and to increase behavioral intention by young adults to get vaccinated. She spent the summer gathering data on risk tolerance, or how individuals tolerate new health risks. The information will be used to determine what factors influence people not to behave in a certain way. Jun presented some of the qualitative research findings at AEJMC.

Jun, who is a native of South Korea and is studying here with a student visa, has specific requirements for work, including the fact that she cannot work outside of campus. Therefore, the funds from the scholarship are a vital form of support.

“With generous support from Grady scholarships, I could sustain myself better,” Jun said. “I could concentrate better on my research, not worrying about how I am going to pay my rent and get groceries. I am very thankful that Grady awarded me scholarships additional to my assistantship during the semester.”

Grady doctoral student receives esteemed Inez Kaiser Award for health communication research

Posted on by Don McClain

Fourth-year doctoral student, Yen-I Lee was recently selected as one of three recipients of the prestigious Inez Kaiser Graduate Student of Color Award. This award is given by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in honor of Inez Kaiser, the first African-American woman to be a member of the Public Relations Society of America. Lee received the award for her research in strategic health communication.

The PRSA Foundation funds this award given by the AEJMC to encourage diversity within the field of public relations. Lee’s achievement is particularly exceptional as there was a large pool of applicants this year. Lee will be honored on Aug. 10 at the AEJMC Conference in Chicago.

Lee has conducted extensive research at Grady and been a part of many different research efforts, however she is especially keen on researching specific topics regarding health public relations, the strategic use of technology, and cultural psychology in health risk and crisis message design.

Her vast research on these subjects have included projects investigating cancer risk perception, advertising and health product brands on Facebook and scale development of health crisis information seeking and sharing. She also has designed and led several of her own research projects, one researching health-related Facebook content and another examining the effectiveness of flu vaccination PSAs.

Lee is an instructor at Grady College. She has taught as a lab instructor for the social media analytics class and will be teaching a public relations research class this upcoming fall.

Lee is honored to have received the award and says that it has encouraged her to continue in her research.

“I would like to thank Grady College for being supportive of students,” she said. “I also would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Yan Jin, and professors who support and guide me regarding my research interests, so I can continue to make quality contributions to the Grady College.”

For more about Lee’s research, visit http://grady.uga.edu/faculty/lee-yen-i/.