It was an exciting end to the 2023-2024 school year for the Department of Communication!
In May, the Department held its annual Scholarship and Excellence Awards event, celebrating the academic and research accomplishments of over 70 Communication students. Students were honored with recognition awards and donor-sponsored scholarships to support their studies.
Each of these awards had a story behind it—whether created by supporters of the Department to recognize a cherished alum, to encourage rigorous and relevant scholarship, or to remember friends and colleagues. Faculty and staff presented the awards to the student recipients who were rising sophomores, juniors, seniors, and graduate students in our MA/PhD program.
At the Department’s graduation ceremony on June 4, families and friends gathered at UW’s Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion as over 400 Communication graduates walked across the stage to receive their diplomas. Graduates included those from our two undergraduate majors (Journalism and Public Interest Communication and Communication), the Communication Leadership Master’s program, Master’s of Arts, and ten newly-minted PhDs.
This year’s commencement speaker was Suki Dardarian, a 1980 graduate and 2023 inductee of the Department of Communication’s Alumni Hall of Fame.
Dardarian shared her experience as a longtime newspaper editor, including her current role as the Managing Editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a position of community and journalistic leadership that demanded especially great care after the killing of George Floyd and its impact on that city, the nation, and the world.
Dardarian emphasized the need to trust her team, to challenge assumptions, to listen to the community, and to lead by example in order to produce accurate and truthful news coverage. She promised new graduates that when faced with the hardest points of their career, they will have what they need to make their way through it. Read more about Dardarians’s career here.
After Dardarian’s remarks, Dr. Leah Ceccarelli, Graduate Program Coordinator, kicked off the conferring of degrees of PhD graduates by reading names and dissertation titles as the students’ faculty advisors “hooded” each graduate with the long satin garment that completes the doctoral regalia, signifying the successful completion of the PhD.
Dr. Ekin Yasin, Director of the Communication Leadership program, honored those earning a Master’s of Communication in Digital Media, Communities and Networks, or Communication Leadership.
Teaching Professor Caley Cook, Undergraduate Program Coordinator, led the conferral of Bachelor’s of Arts in Communication and Journalism and Public Interest Communication.
We congratulate the class of 2024 and welcome them to our dynamic network of UW Communication alumni!
