Celebrating Twenty Years of Honoring Alumni Civic and Professional Excellence
This academic year marked the 20th anniversary of UW Communication’s Alumni Hall of Fame and Alumni of Distinction event. Each year, the Department honors outstanding alumni who are making a difference in their careers and communities by inducting them into the Department’s Alumni Hall of Fame. This award is for outstanding alumni who have distinguished themselves through acts of service and their professional achievements since graduating from the University of Washington. We also recognize our exceptional more recent graduates through the CommLeader award, Excellence in Mentorship Award, and Early Career Award. Learn more about this year’s honorees here.
At this year’s event in November, Hall of Fame inductees and Alumni of Distinction honorees were celebrated by faculty, staff, friends, and families with a reception and dinner in their honor. Former Department Chair and Emeritus Professor Jerry Baldasty, himself a Hall of Fame member, offered his reflections on the genesis of this special event. Professor and current Chair, Christine Harold, shared news from the department and emphasized the urgency of studying communication and journalism in today’s volatile world. The ceremony included this retrospective video featuring highlights from past celebrations.
About her induction, Susannah Frame, Chief Investigative Reporter and Head of Journalist Development at KING 5, said “Being back at the University of Washington and receiving this award with my family and many esteemed colleagues in attendance was quite an honor for me. It is a prestigious group of alums who have been inducted before me and I am grateful to be included. I appreciate the UW recognizing investigative journalism and the value it brings to our community.”
Inductee Victor Pickard, PhD, C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, remarked “This award means more to me than I can express in words. The UW Com department is where my adult self and my life’s work really began to take shape. I would not be the scholar I am today if it hadn’t been for the privilege of working with such brilliant faculty and graduate students at UW early in my career. They generously provided me with the moral support, intellectual enrichment, and academic training that continues to guide me to this day.”
Newly-minted Hall of Fame member Austin Jenkins, an esteemed Washington journalist, said of his induction that: “This induction is hugely significant to me professionally. It is immensely meaningful and gratifying to be recognized in this manner. It is all the more meaningful in light of the close connection I feel to the Department of Communication and the Communication Leadership program at UW.”
Erika Samson, Director of Academic Services for the Department of Communication was honored with this year’s Outstanding Early Career Award. Samson said that “It has been an honor and a privilege to be this year’s recipient of the Early Career Award. This award serves as a gentle reminder of all the impactful work I have done with our students, and it gives me that push to continue it for years to come. I am truly grateful to not only be a COM alumna, but to be a COM staff member. This department has always made me feel valued and trusted.”
Gaylene Meyer, Vice President of Global Marketing and Demand at Impinj, was presented with the CommLeader award, which honors outstanding alumni of the Department’s Communication Leadership program. “Receiving the award was an amazing experience. One of the reasons I joined the CommLead program was to be part of a community of people who care deeply about the field of communication. It was such an honor to be recognized in front of a room filled with teachers and professionals in this field. I think I’m still glowing a little bit from that wonderful evening.”
Communication Alumni Hall of Fame and Alumni of Distinction event, full video.
Entering the León’s den: Students study abroad in Spain
Fourth-year Communication major Molly Miller didn’t know what she had gotten herself into when her study abroad host parents did not speak a word of English. Without having Spanish language skills herself, Miller was stuck nodding and smiling during her host mom’s high-energy apartment tour, struggling to break the communication barrier, she said: “León made me realize that communication is something that I had taken for granted all my life, and…it was really interesting to see what happens when that’s taken away.”
Miller was one of eighteen students who participated in the Communication Department’s Fall 2024 León Study Abroad Program, which offers the opportunity to earn UW credits while exploring León, Spain through organized excursions and immersing themselves in Spanish language and culture.
Study abroad in Spain is available each year through the UW León Center, which has hosted UW programs from multiple departments since its inauguration by the King and Queen of Spain in May 2010. After a COVID-related hiatus, the center has successfully reinstated its study abroad opportunities, including its popular Communication program.
The initial challenges of study abroad were a lot to manage, but Miller says the pride that came from overcoming those challenges became one of her proudest accomplishments.
Miller’s strategy was to lean into the immersive experience as much as she could— talking with strangers, going out regularly with friends, and taking full advantage of the social and academic support system that had conveniently travelled with her across the world.
Her Spanish language class in León helped to strengthen her Spanish skills, and courses taught by UW Communication professors Andrea Otáñez and LeiLani Nishime, helped to acclimate her to the culture. Otáñez and Nishime taught COM 464: Writing With Voice and COM 389: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Media, incorporating Spanish cultural elements into the curriculum.
Otáñez said the most successful students came in with an open mind and a willingness to grapple with the ideas of ethnocentrism, and an ability to analyze one’s own preconceived notions of culture.
“There’s…a lot of interaction and care with students that’s completely different from when you’re on [UW’s] campus,” Otáñez said about her experience as coordinator. “I always want to make sure they are emotionally okay and make sure they realize my door is always open.”
León is a culturally conservative city, which meant that students’ success hinged on their ability to observe and understand how sensitive topics like sexism and racism might present differently than they do in Seattle, especially for those who are cultural outsiders themselves, added Otáñez.
Keeping an open mind proved to be the key for Paris White, a fourth-year Communication major who was thrown off when her host mom and sister appeared to be perpetually angry at each other. White said she quickly realized that what she interpreted as anger was a new style of communication that she learned to appreciate and find humor in. Once she figured that out, she was hanging out with her host sister and hopping between friends’ houses to meet their own quirky host families, she said.
“Living in León was probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life,” White said, explaining that the initial obstacles were part of what made taking part in the program a privilege.
White made sure to take advantage of the program’s built-in excursions to places outside León including Madrid, Las Médulas, and Santiago de Compostela. Led by Otáñez and Nishime, White said these excursions helped build relationships at an accelerated pace with both her cohort and her professors.
From Otáñez’s perspective, the bonds built over just three months were a result of overcoming challenges the group faced tackling the cultural differences in León. The program’s greatest gift was giving students the chance to break through barriers with plenty of resources to fall back on.
“We all left impressions on one another,” Otáñez said. “And now we’re all part of each other’s fabric on some level because of how intense those programs are. And I think of it all very fondly.”
Scheidel lecture: “Can Journalists be Safe in a Violent World?”
In Autumn quarter, UW Communication invited Dr. Silvio Waisbord to deliver the Department’s annual Scheidel Lecture. Dr. Waisbord shared lessons from his research to explore the question “Can Journalists Be Safe in a Violent World?”
A tradition since 1998, this event honors Professor Thomas Scheidel’s lifetime of scholarship, teaching, and academic leadership by bringing distinguished scholars to the UW Department of Communication to meet and engage with faculty, students, and our broader UW and Seattle community.
About the talk: “Can Journalists Be Safe in a Violent World?” The safety of journalists is one of the most formidable challenges for press freedom and democracy around the world. It is the result of the combination of various forms of violence intended to break journalists’ sense of security and autonomy – the ability to control their work. Threats to safety drive journalists to self-censorship – to use extreme caution in their work, including the selection of stories and sources. Here I propose that the problem of journalists’ safety is worse and more complex today than in the recent past. This explains both why the problem has received growing attention globally, and why it is harder to find solutions. A growing academic and grey literature continues to demonstrate the multiple dimensions of the problem, as well as the challenges for finding and implementing effective, sustainable solutions to confront a multidimensional problem in various contexts. Although there are no easy, proven approaches to reduce violence, it is necessary to step up actions to protect and support journalists, that require collective actions by news organizations, freedom of expression organizations, digital companies, and governments.
Dr. Silvio Waisbord is Professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. He is President and Fellow of the International Communication Association. He is the Editor of the International Journal of Communication. He is the author and editor of nineteen books, as well as articles on journalism and politics, communication studies, media policy, and communication for social change. He is the author of the forthcoming Introduction to Journalism (Polity) and co-editor (with TJ Billard) of Public Scholarship in Communication Studies (U of Illinois Press, 2024). He served as Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University (2020-2023). Also, he is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Communication and the International Journal of Press/Politics. Waisbord received a Licenciatura in Sociology from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and a Ph.D in Sociology from the University of California, San Diego.
New collaboration with UW’s Jackson School covers Seattle soccer leading into World Cup
As Seattle prepares to host games for the 2026 World Cup, a partnership between UW’s Department of Communication, UW’s Jackson School of International Studies, and UW Bothell’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences is working to tell the story of Seattle soccer outside of the spotlight.
The partnership is building a new media project called Home Fields, which will document, report on, and collaborate with grassroots soccer communities in the greater Seattle area to highlight how marginalized communities confront issues of belonging, play equity, and access to community resources through soccer. Home Fields is telling the story of soccer as a vehicle to understand resilience, solidarity, and joy through culture and sports, and inviting UW COM students to help tell the story.
Home Fields is a part of the new Global Sport Lab, a project that utilizes sport as a lens through which to explore international issues. Media professionals, UW faculty, UW students, and those involved in local grassroots soccer will work collaboratively to produce journalistic stories for both the Home Fields website as well as for distribution with partner outlets that cover the people, conflicts, issues, and trends of soccer.
UW Communication has a long history of training journalists and community media practitioners and will play a part in developing this partnership leading up to the World Cup. This work will be produced by UW students through internships, freelance opportunities, and through elective classes in the Journalism and Public Interest Communication program at UW COM in 2025 and 2026. At a time of heightened interest in soccer in our city, the project will work in concert with the Global Sport Lab’s innovative research, lecture events, and classes that intersect with soccer. Driven by her own experiences as a sports journalist, Teaching Professor Caley Cook is a co-director working to launch Home Fields in 2025.
“Soccer tells us so much about ourselves as a society, a culture, and as a place of belonging,” Cook said. “At this pivotal moment in Seattle when we are playing host to soccer teams from across the globe, it is also such a meaningful moment to look at our community here in Seattle.”
“I am also delighted to build opportunities for our journalism students here at UW COM to produce sports journalism that helps shed light on soccer as a place of meaning and change,” Cook continued. “Home Fields will train students to use a collaborative, embedded approach to journalism, telling stories about the social, political, and economic dimensions of mega-sporting events like the World Cup, and how they impact the cities that play host. I am so excited for the written, video, and audio journalism work that our students will be able to publish.”
Interested in supporting Home Fields? Follow this link.
Introducing Gillian Cobb, Outreach and Events Manager
UW Communication is pleased to welcome Gillian Cobb (she/her), as our new Outreach and Events Manager. Gillian has already hit the ground running, organizing various department events, fostering our relationships with alumni, and helping share the department’s stories and amplify our accomplishments across our platforms. Gillian is a public programs and events professional who is passionate about creating meaningful experiences for others, and providing people with spaces to grow, reflect, connect, and play. Gillian received her B.A. in History from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where she also spent four years working with new and incoming students in the Office of Admissions and Transition and Parent Programs. She later completed her Masters in Museology at the University of Washington, where she honed her skills in public programming and community engagement. Gillian is delighted to be returning to higher ed and joining the electric campus community.
If you have a story to share or are interested in volunteering to support our students, please reach out to Gillian at ghcobb@uw.edu, or stop by to say hello in CMU 102-A. She can’t wait to meet you!
Assistant Professor Savaughn Williams joins UW Communication
UW Communication proudly welcomes our newest faculty member, assistant professor Savaughn Williams, a scholar of interpersonal communication.
Williams started her educational journey with plans to become a doctor. But a few years into time as an undergraduate student at Oklahoma Baptist University, she realized she wanted to write. In her junior year, after seeing the lack of opportunities to write in her STEM-focused classes, Williams was inspired by a course in organizational communication and began what would become her career path.
“I wrote my first research paper on this YouTube channel called A Show for No Kids,” said Wiliams. “It’s essentially a channel with a child who is spouting KKK rhetoric, trying to encourage other children to have the same beliefs. I used Burke’s pentadic analysis, and I was like, ‘This is really cool.’ I didn’t know you could just continue to do this.” This experience made Williams want to pursue graduate study to deepen her understanding of relational communication, she said. This led her to the PhD program at University of Kansas.
Now at UW Communication, Williams teaches classes in Family Communication, Interpersonal Communication and COM 289, which focuses on Communication, Power, and Difference. After years teaching in Kansas and Missouri, Williams remarked on the differences she sees working with students at UW.
“In the Midwest, students are shocked to find out things like gender being on a spectrum, communicating about power, talking about racism, sexism, talking about inequities. … In the Midwest, that conversation was, these things exist,” Williams said. What’s “interesting here [is] it’s more so that these things exist, but let’s talk about what they’re doing now, let’s actually think through these processes.”
These cultural differences, and specifically the role race plays in cultural and personal perspectives, has been at the forefront of Williams’ research. “I completed a study during my MA and PhD program, where I was interested in whether or not Black-White female friendships communicated about race,” said Williams. “With that study, I was the person interviewing both of the friends, and I did dyadic interviews, which just means I interviewed them both at the same time, and then I interviewed them individually, so I had to really think through systems of power in the process of interviewing somebody who is not the same race as me, which tends to be quite threatening conversation and topics, particularly within American culture.”
This venture into the ways communication is infused with race and power was more of a conscious decision than an accidental one, borne out of Williams’ personal experiences, she said. “I started to realize [that] I was raised in this very predominantly white space, and throughout my childhood, I was striving towards these ideologies that had to do with whiteness.…I was like, I don’t think I know who I am as a Black woman in this world. So then I wrote about it. I researched it, I learned about it,” said Williams.
When searching for a faculty position, Williams was initially skeptical about the breadth of job opportunities available for someone working in her specific area. “There are some things at some point during the [job] application process that you do just have to relinquish and let go of,” said Williams. “One of those things is location, and so I was just looking for jobs where I would be able to do the research that I enjoy doing. I had applied to the University of Washington, and it was exactly what I was looking for.”
Meanwhile, the faculty search committee at UW Communication found their ideal candidate in Williams, and were especially impressed by her innate ability to communicate her research and ideas.
“Part of what we loved about Savaughn was that she is a qualitative researcher, sometimes pushing the boundaries of what kinds of methods are useful for asking questions around interpersonal communication research,” said Valerie Manusov, a professor in the Department of Communication who was on the team that hired Williams. “We also were looking for somebody whose research makes a social impact. Not all interpersonal communication scholars think about those things, but she does both in her master’s work and in her PhD.”
In addition to her research skills, Williams’ colleagues praise her as someone who is an engaging speaker and an overall positive presence in the department.
“Savaughn knows her stuff,” said assistant professor Dr. Wang Liao, another recent hire in the area of interpersonal communication. “She’s truly enthusiastic about what she’s doing, and she’s able to use solid theory and methods to study that, which is why she got hired.”
Williams says she feels as if she’s found, in the University of Washington, the perfect place to continue her research and focus on her professional passions.
“I don’t know that I would have been able to nourish my research on race, identity and relationships at those other institutions the way I will be able to here at UW,” said Williams.
Currently, Williams is working on a research project concerning BlPOC veterans with PTSD, and how they communicate about and cope with their symptoms.
“I come from a military family,” she said. “So, my research, while always situated in this idea of ‘I want to know identity. I want to know race,’ is also very much contextualized by my own experiences in my day to day life.”
Newsbites
- In March, Artist in Residence Anita Verna Crofts will travel to speak at the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia as part of their “Future Thinkers” reading group for Bachelor of Arts students. The group aims to introduce students to international voices across these disciplines to “explore big ideas and current social problems while discussing readings to open up investigations of everyday problems.”
- The Center for Speech & Debate ran a debate in COM 234: Public Debate on ballot initiative I-2124 with Washington State Senator Mark Mullet and “No on I-2124” Campaign Manager Libby Watson. Read more and watch the debate here.
- Scholars in the Center for Journalism, Media & Democracy (CJMD) published Statehouse Journalism in Transition: Insights from Olympia, Washington, a report on the recent decline of statehouse reporters in Olympia, WA and its impacts. Read the full report here.
- Associate Professor Katy Pearce shared her expertise on the cultural effects of social media on King 5 TV’s New Day NW, KIRO, and KOMO, discussing the looming TikTok ban and data privacy.
- In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Dr. Ralina Joseph, Professor, Director of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity (CCDE), and Associate Dean of Equity and Justice for the UW Graduate School, was recognized by the University of Washington and UW Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity in an article discussing Joseph’s journey at UW, her community work, and the Interrupting Privilege Program. Read the full article here.
- Professor Patricia Moy has been appointed to the U.S. Census Bureau Scientific Advisory Committee. Members of this committee advise the Census Bureau director on the application of scientific developments in areas such as statistical data collection, survey methodology, geospatial and statistical analysis, econometrics, cognitive psychology, business operations and computer science as they relate to Census Bureau programs and activities.
- Artist in Residence John Tomasic, who teaches in the Department’s Journalism and Public Interest Communication program, has been appointed as interim director of The Daily and Student Publications as longtime director Diana Kramer prepares to retire. Tomasic has served as The Daily’s newsroom adviser over the past two academic years.
- The Communication Leadership Master’s Program welcomes applications for Round 2 admissions (deadline: April 1st, 2025) as we continue preparing professionals for tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities. Contact commlead@uw.edu for program details and application information.
Scholarship Spotlight
Here is a small sampling of the research produced by our Communication faculty members in the past few months.
- Rahman, A. (2025). Opportunities and challenges of AI in public media journalism. In A. D’Arma, M. Michalis, G. F. Lowe, & M. Zita (Eds.), Challenges and developments in Public Service Journalism (pp. 122 – 147). University of Westminster Press.
- Syfert, C., & Ceccarelli, L. (2025). COVID scientists as rhetorical citizens: Persuasive op-eds and public debate over science policy. Public Understanding of Science, 0(0).
- Manusov, V., & Geary, D. (2024). Facilitated Interracial Dialogues About Race. San Diego, CA: Cognella.