It’s a new year at the School of Communication and Information, and the School welcomes four new faculty members this year: Vikki Katz and Jennifer Warren in the Department of Communication; Todd Wolfson in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies; and Joe Sanchez in the Department of Library and Information Science.
The new faculty members add to the strength of the faculty at the School of Communication and Information, respected as having some of the most influential and productive researchers and teachers in their fields. The newcomers’ areas of expertise are also aligned with three emerging areas of research concentration at the School of Communication and Information representing society’s foremost priorities and challenges – Health and Wellness, Global Media and Democracy, and Social Media Interaction and Collaborative Design.
Meet the new faculty members at the School of Communication and Information:
Vikki Katz, Department of Communication
Office: Room 109, 4 Huntington Street
Fall 2009 Course: Mediated Communication Theory (undergraduate)
Katz’s research and teaching interests include family and interpersonal communication, health communication and health disparities, media consumption and production, community-based interventions, race and ethnicity, and mixed methods research. She is co-author of “Understanding Ethnic Media: Their Social and Cultural Roles in Economic and Policy Context” (Sage, 2009). She received her Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Southern California. Katz’s examined immigrant children’s roles in facilitating their families social networks into community connections. She is co-principal investigator on a $660,000 grant from the California Endowment to establish a pilot project in Los Angeles to serve as the blueprint for that agency’s entry into communities with serious health disparities.
Joe Sanchez, Department of Library and Information Science
Office: Room 205, 192 College Avenue
Fall 2009 Course: Information Technologies for Libraries and Information Agencies (MLIS)
Sanchez’s interests are in the areas of social media interaction and collaborative design with an emphasis on leaning, information and communication technologies, and school; information interaction; and cultural, social, and institutional analysis. He explores the social and cultural implications of the use of social media, and the use of social media in organizational and play settings. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009, and his dissertation research involved an ethnographic study in the virtual world Second Life, examining the social practices and challenges of a virtual organization and analyzing ways in which users foster collaboration in a 3D virtual world. In 2008, he was the first recipient of the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Academic Service Entrepreneur grant.
Jennifer Warren, Department of Communication
Office: Room 216, 4 Huntington Street
Fall 2009 Course: Interpersonal Communication Theory (undergraduate)
Warren focuses on health communication in her research and teaching, specifically examining low-income, inner-city, and immigrant communities. She is also interested in substance abuse prevention, ehealth, health information seeking, access-related health disparities, intervention development, and community-based participatory research. Warren received her Ph.D. in 2006 from Penn State. Her dissertation was titled “Communicating identities in health information seeking: Single African-American mothers, preadolescent substance use prevention, and the internet.” Warren is principal investigator on two grants totaling more than $200,000, both addressing smoking cessation education in the African-American community. She has also served as co-principal investigator on several other grants totaling more than $4 million. Since receiving her Ph.D., Warren has been a Prevent Cancer Foundation Fellow in the Program in Health Disparities Research at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
Todd Wolfson, Department of Journalism and Media Studies
Office: Room 110, 4 Huntington Street
Fall 2009 Course: Media Criticism (undergraduate)
Wolfson studies new media and communication, globalization, social movements, urban social theory, urban poverty, 21st century class and race, virtual- and media-based ethnography, and visual anthropology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 and his dissertation was titled “The Cyber Left: Indymedia and the Making of 21st Century Struggle.” Wolfson has produced or co-produced three media productions for the Media Mobilizing Project. A fourth, “Healthcare for all: Pennsylvania Homecare Workers” is currently in production under his direction. Wolfson received a $150,000 award from the Knight Foundation 21st Century News Challenge to create an immigrant and low-wage workers video newscast network in Philadelphia tied to a municipal wireless system. He was the recipient of the 2008 Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student.
