On July 6, Purdue's Board of Trustees named Beverly Davenport Sypher the "Susan Bulkeley Butler Professor of Leadership." Dr. Sypher, a Professor in Organizational Communication, has also been charged with starting up a new "Center for Leadership Excellence," which will be housed in Discovery Park. Butler, a Purdue alumna, was the first female partner in Andersen Consulting (now known as Accenture) and currently serves on Purdue"s Board of Trustees. Davenport Sypher also received a "Seed for Success" Award in September. This award was created by the Provost and the Vice President of Research to recognize faculty members who have attracted sponsored research grants to Purdue in excess of $1 million. Davenport Sypher is the principal investigator on a $3 million National Science Foundation grant to enhance the success of underrepresented undergraduate students in STEM disciplines.

Sorin Matei, promoted to Associate Professor. He also received two Teaching and Learning Technologies grants for "Visible Past" and "ThoughtArk."
Matei also published "VisiblePast: Learning and Discovering in Real and Virtual Space" in the journal First Monday. He also launched the Web site http://www.alterpode.com to teach geographic relativism.

Hyunyi Cho, Assistant Professor, is the principal investigator on an award from the National Institutes of Health to conduct research on the "Effects of gain vs. loss frame sun protection messages on rural Indiana adolescents." The grant is for $146,669. She also is a co-investigator with Mark Tucker, Assistant Professor in Agricultural Communication, on a multi-institution $2.5 million grant from the USDA. They will focus on "Consumer perceptions of risk, communication preferences and behaviors in food safety." The Purdue portion of the award is for $434,000.

Bart Collins, Associate Professor, received $293,942 from the Regenstrief Foundation for a two-year telehealth project focusing on "Developing telehealth technology to improve chronic disease management."

Glenn Sparks, Professor, had his co-authored book "Refrigerator Rights" re-released by a new publisher, White River Press.

Making lifelong friends in today's technology fueled age isn't easy, according to the research of department Professor Glenn Sparks. Sparks was part of a research team that followed the friendships of 32 pairs of same-sex and 13 pairs of male-female best friends from 1983 to 2002. This research, "Forecasting 'friends forever': A longitudinal investigation of sustained closeness between best friends," was published in the summer edition of the journal Personal Relationships. Sparks' co-authors are Andrew M. Ledbetter, an assistant professor at Ohio University, and Em Griffin, professor emeritus at Wheaton College.

Brant Burleson, Professor, taught a seminar on "Building Personal, Social, and Community Well-Being through Interpersonal Communication" at the NCA Institute for Faculty Development (the "Hope Conference") at Randolph-Macon College in July. Burleson also presented a keynote address at this conference: "Cold Comfort: Explaining and Curing Ineptitude in Emotional Support." His comments about the importance of communication skills and research are featured in the August 2007 issue of Communication Currents, the online Web magazine of the National Communication Association. Burleson was one of five communication scholars asked to respond to questions people typically have about the discipline of Communication, as well as how the issues studied in the discipline relate to everyday life. Burleson also received the Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award from the department. In addition, he published "Constructivism: A general theory of communication skill" in "Explaining communication: Contemporary theories and exemplars" and co-authored articles in Personal Relationships and Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

Austin Babrow, Professor, received the Distinguished Article Award, Health Communication Division, National Communication Association. He also had a Top Four Paper in Spiritual Communication Division, NCA. Babrow also was the lead scholar-mentor, Applied Communication Theory and Research Section, Doctoral Honors Seminar co-sponsored by the NCA and University of Alabama.

Jay Wang, promoted to Associate Professor, was invited by the American Chamber of Commerce in China to serve as a judge for its 3rd Annual AmCham Corporate Social Responsibility Awards.

Tyler Harrison, Assistant Professor, co-authored "Competitive and cooperative communication conflict moves: The influence of ombuds processes on organizational trust and commitment" in The International Journal of Conflict Management. Harrison also published "My professor is so unfair: Student attitudes and experiences of conflict with faculty" in Conflict Resolution Quarterly. He co-authored with Susan Morgan, Associate Professor, and graduate students LaShara Davis and Mark Di Corcia "Entertainment (mis)education: The framing of organ donation in entertainment television," in Health Communication and earned a Top three paper award with the same co-authors for "The Workplace Partnership for Life: The effectiveness of high- and low-intensity worksite campaigns to promote organ donation," from the Health Communication Division of the National Communication Association.

Erina MacGeorge, promoted to Associate Professor. She also received a $990 grant from the Purdue Alumni Association to support research on "What do people with bipolar disorder perceive as supportive behavior from members of their social networks." MacGeorge also received identical funding (another $990) from a CLA Research Incentive Grant on the same project. The funds will support Eileen Doherty's M.A. thesis work on this topic.

Patrice Buzzanell, Professor, named the Chair for the Council of Communications (CCA). She and Ph.D students Lorraine Kisselburgh and Brenda Berkelaar Van Pelt received a Young Engineer Studies (YES) Grant of $44,985 for their proposal "Encouraging Science and Engineering Interests in Young Children: Toward a Taxonomy of Effective Career Messages and Stories" from the Purdue University Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning.

Howard Sypher, Professor, received a "Seed for Success Award" in May 2007 from the Provost and Vice President of Research. This award recognizes faculty members who have attracted sponsored research grants to Purdue University in excess of $1 million. Sypher is a co-PI on a 2006 award of $1 million from the Regenstrief Foundation to support "Applying Principles of Engineering and Management for the Improvement of Healthcare."

Pat Rochon, Assistant Professor, had her documentary production work on "Seeds of Hope Outreach" in Swaziland and Lesotho highlighted during the visit of Swaziland's Princess Ncengenencenge Dlamini to Purdue.

Robin Jensen, Assistant Professor, was awarded the National Communication Association's Wrage-Baskerville Award for 2007. This award is given to the top contributed paper in the Public Address Division. The essay is titled "'For while my mother knows a lot, she won"t tell me a thing": Ella Flagg Young's Fragmented Rhetoric in Support of the Chicago Experiment." A version of this essay titled "Using Science to Argue for Sexual Education in U.S. Public Schools: Dr. Ella Flagg Young and the 1913 'Chicago Experiment'" has been accepted for publication in Science Communication.

Ralph Webb, Professor, taught in the CIMBA program in Italy this fall.

Mohan Dutta, Associate Professor, and Susan Morgan, Associate Professor, have been selected for Purdue's Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy (supported by the Kauffman Foundation). Dutta will be in the 2007 class while Morgan will participate in fall 2008.

Marifran Mattson, Associate Professor, and graduate student Heng Xu participated in the first National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing & Media hosted by the CDC in Atlanta. Mattson also testified before the legislative Health Finance Commission in Indianapolis regarding "the introduction of legislation to create parity for prosthetic coverage under private insurance plans."

Samuel McCormick, Assistant Professor, recently won the 2007 Pamela J. Cooper Teaching Award from the Central States Communication Association. He co-authored with John Durham Peters an article on "Hermeneutics" coming out in the 2007 International Encyclopedia of Communication. He also presented a paper on the rhetoric of exemplarity in the work of Christine de Pizan to the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Interdisciplinary Program.