Steve Wilson, Professor, was selected as the 2008 NCA Bernard Brommel Award winner for his contribution to family communication. He also had two articles published: "Mother's trait verbal aggressiveness as a predictor of maternal and child behavior during play-time interactions" in Human Communication and "Do physically abusive, neglectful, and non-maltreating parents display different levels of evasiveness, positivity, and involvement when interacting with their children?" in Child Abuse & Neglect. Wilson also co-authored a paper "Understanding Child Abuse and Neglect in Tippecanoe County" and participated in sessions with local social workers. He also received a renewal on his CAPE Research Program project from the Community and Family Resource Center.

Robin E. Jensen, Assistant Professor, published "Sexual polysemy: The discursive group of talk about sex and education in U.S. history" in Communication, Culture & Critique. She also gave an invited lecture on "Amelia Earhart Before Purdue" for the bi-annual David Hutton Interdisciplinary Lecture Series sponsored by Purdue University's Rhetoric and Composition Graduate Program.

Ralph Webb, Professor, was selected as one of two winners of the department's "W. Charles Redding Award for Excellence in Teaching." He is also the College of Liberal Arts' nominee for the universitywide "Murphy Award for Outstanding Teaching."

Robin Clair, Professor, was invited to be among this year's Distinguished Scholars at CSCA in St. Louis. She also received Honorable Mention for her poem "Flat Sandals Tempting Fate" from the Writer's Digest 77th Annual Awards. She also co-authored "Anarchy and Jurisprudence: Examining Emma Goldman's fight to secure free speech by challenging the Comstock Act" in Communication Law Review. She also received an engagement grant to develop an advertising campaign for the Common Reading Program at Purdue University ($1,000).

Patrice Buzzanell, Professor, was chosen as one of the recipients of the department's "W. Charles Redding Award for Excellence in Teaching." She is also the department's nominee for the CLA "Teaching Excellence Award." She also gave the welcome and keynote addresses at the 2008 Intercultural Communication Conference at Shanghai Normal University and the LSP and Professional Communication Conference at City University of Hong Kong. She also co-authored seven book chapters and the article "Cultural discourses and discursive resources for meaningful work: Constructing and disrupting identities in contemporary capitalism" in Management Communication Quarterly.

Jake Jensen, Assistant Professor, and graduate students LaShara Davis, Lisa Guntzviller, and Andy King took third place for their poster "How People Process Health Recommendations: The Information Overload Model," at the Cancer Prevention and Control Poster Session hosted by Oncological Sciences Center. Jensen also contributed to a piece in the Chicago Tribune, "Iraqi shoe tosser: A lesson for frustrated Illinoisans?"

Glenn Sparks, Professor, published an update to his textbook "Media effects research: A basic overview."

Josh Boyd, Associate Professor, provided comments on stadium naming rights for the FoxSports article "Consol wins naming rights for arena."

Felicia Roberts, Associate Professor, was appointed a "Visiting Fellow in the Center for Behavioral and Social Science" in CLA for Fall 2009.

John Greene, Professor, along with Associate Professor Melanie Morgan, graduate student Jennifer McCullough and alumnae Elizabeth Gill and Angie Graves, received a "Top 3 Paper" award from the Communication and Social Cognition (CSC) Division of NCA for their paper, "Creative Facility in Narrative Production."

Brant Burleson, Professor, was invited to be among this year's Distinguished Scholars at Central States Communication Association in St. Louis. He also had "Understanding the outcomes of supportive communication: A dual-process approach," selected for presentation on the Top Four Papers Panel of the Communication Theory Division of the CSCA. He also had a Top 3 Paper award from ICA's Intercultural Communication Division. His other publications include chapters in two books.

Tom Goodrich, Continuing Lecturer, students in his COM353, Problems in Public Relations, were awarded three grants, totaling $4,200, to work with area nonprofit organizations.

Lorraine Kisselburgh, Assistant Professor, received $30,000 to fund her research on "Health communities of practice: social connectedness and collaboration in nanoHUB systems" from a Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering seed grant and the center for Assistive Technologies at Discovery Park. She, along with Patrice Buzzanell and Brenda Berkelaar, also received a "Top Three Paper Award" from the Organizational Communication division of ICA for their paper "Discourses, Imagination, and Matrial Realities: Children in the United States and China Talk About Work."

Marifran Mattson, Associate Professor, and her COM 320 students' project, "Designing, Testing, Producing, and Distributing New Messages for Motorcycle Safety in the Greater Purdue Community" was funded $1,285 by the Purdue Office of Engagement. She also presented the keynote at the 2009 Public Health Needs a Piece of the Pie Advocacy Day in February. This event is sponsored by the Indiana Society of Public Health Education (inSOPHE) and Indiana Public Health Association (IPHA). Her presentation was titled "Engaging the Community in Public Health Advocacy."

Sorin Matei, Associate Professor, along with Co-PI David Braun on an NSF Award that will support 20,000 CPU-hours to analyze Wikipedia's collaborative process from its beginnings to the present. Matei is also part of a group who received a Purdue 2008-2009 Program Award for Instructional Innovation ($67,310) for "Instructional Infrastructure for the Vertically Integrated Projects Program." He also published two articles in the Romanian edition of Esquire, on his travels in China and on YouTube's role in setting the contemporary cultural agenda.

Samuel McCormick, Assistant Professor, published "The Political Identity of the Philosopher: Resistance, Relative Power, and the Endurance of Potential" in Philosophy and Rhetoric.

Beverly Davenport Sypher, Professor, is PI on an NSF grant to fund the "Midwest Crossroads Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate."

Mohan Dutta, Associate Professor, was the keynote speaker at the Sooner Communication Conference at the University of Oklahoma. His talk: "Addressing global health inequalities: A culture-centered approach."