News and Announcements

The Department of Communication is excited to announce eight new students joining the University of Utah Communication Department at the Asia Campus to pursue their Master's Degrees. Please extend them a warm welcome!

Associate Professor Leandra Hernández is celebrating the forthcoming release of a co-edited volume that promises to reshape how we think about mentorship in higher education.

The Department of Communication is celebrating the outstanding achievements of Assistant Professor Haoning Xue, whose research at the intersection of health communication and media technology has earned international recognition.

Adjunct Associate Professor Amanda Dickson Wilhelm brings her wealth of media experience and enthusiasm for communication into the classroom. Best known to Utah audiences as Amanda Dickson, she co-hosts Utah’s Morning News on KSL NewsRadio and hosts the award-winning program A Woman’s View. Beyond the airwaves, she is a published author, speaker, and dedicated community leader serving on several nonprofit boards, including the National Kidney Foundation of Utah and Hale Centre Theatre’s National Advisory Board.

Reporters and leaders from the award-winning Salt Lake Tribune will share their expertise with the emerging journalists, storytellers, and communication professionals at the U throughout September as part of COMM 4555: Intermediate Journalism. Learn how newsrooms operate, and how journalists cover topics such as education, politics, sports, religion, and more.

An article coauthored by Associate Professor Ben Lyons has been named runner-up for the International Communication Association (ICA) Political Communication Division’s 2025 Kaid-Sanders Best Article of the Year Award. Lyons was recognized for his coauthored article, “Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity,” published in Science.

The Department of Communication is pleased to announce the addition of three outstanding faculty members for the 2025–26 academic year. These new hires bring a wealth of experience, innovative research, and a strong commitment to student success. Their expertise will further strengthen our teaching and scholarship across key areas in the field, and we look forward to the energy and ideas they will contribute to our academic community.

Three faculty members in the University of Utah’s Department of Communication have been awarded Taft-Nicholson Faculty Fellowships for 2025. These competitive fellowships provide faculty across disciplines with one to three weeks of dedicated writing time in the scenic Centennial Valley of Montana, home to the Taft-Nicholson Environmental Humanities Education Center.

The Department of Communication is excited to announce six new students joining the University of Utah Communication Department to pursue their Master's Degrees or PhDs. Please extend them a warm welcome!

The College of Humanities in partnership with the Department of Communication has launched a new Journalism website to serve as a dedicated platform highlighting student-produced journalism across a variety of classes, topics and formats.

Can a joke undermine trustworthiness? New research from University of Utah communication scholars Professor Sara Yeo and Assistant Professor Isabelle Freiling, made possible through a collaboration with Hello SciCom, examines how different styles of satire can shape public trust in science communicators.

The Department of Communication is proud to announce that Ellie Estrada, a doctoral candidate in our graduate program, has been selected for the 2025–2026 Graduate Student Fellows Program (GSFP) of the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE). Ellie is the first graduate student from our department to earn this fellowship since the program’s inception in 1997 and joins 12 other graduate students in the 25-26 GSFP cohort.

The Department of Communication and the College of Humanities are proud to announce the upcoming release of Davao Smiles, a student-made documentary chronicling a humanitarian dental project in the Philippines spearheaded by Emeritus Professor Paul S. Rose.

As climate change continues to accelerate, institutions across sectors are being called to not only reduce emissions but also respond to the unequal burdens that climate change places on different communities. In higher education, universities are developing climate action plans (CAPs) to guide both mitigation and adaptation efforts.

This summer, the Department of Communication proudly celebrates the recognition of two of its own, Emmy Darling and George Rojas, who were honored with Stellar Staff Awards by the College of Humanities.

Scientists are crucial voices in the public debate about wicked problems—societal-scale, high-stakes issues with no clear solutions, like pandemics and artificial intelligence. In the past, experts reached the masses through journalists at traditional news outlets. Today, science discourse happens online, where science content competes for attention with posts from influencers, advocacy groups, conspiracy theorists and other unverified sources.

The Department of Communication at the University of Utah is proud to announce the promotion of five outstanding faculty members whose contributions have strengthened our academic community and expanded the reach of communication research and teaching across disciplines and into the broader public.

We are thrilled to announce that three exceptional graduate students have been awarded prestigious University Fellowships that recognize their academic excellence, impactful research, and dedication to undergraduate education.

The John R. Park Debate Society has been working with the Weschool Speech & Debate Association (WSDA) Southwest in China since November to build strong international debate ties with several Chinese high schools. The team provided debate workshops to help teach middle and high school students research and writing skills, debate techniques and practices, and how to analyze topics for national and international competitions.

This significant study sheds light on what truly matters to individuals living with Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), emphasizing the need to align future research with the lived experiences and concerns of patients and their caregivers.