At the 110th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association (NCA), to be held November 21-24, 2024, in New Orleans, Louisiana, two esteemed faculty members from the Rutgers School of Communication and Information (SC&I) will be recognized for their outstanding contributions to their fields.

 Khadijah Costley White: Everett Hughes Holle Award for Social Justice and Community Engagement

Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies Khadijah Costley White will receive the inaugural Everett Hughes Holle Award for Social Justice and Community Engagement, a new award introduced by the NCA in 2024. This award, established through an endowment by the Holle Center for Communication Arts at the University of Alabama, honors scholars whose work centers on community service and applied scholarship aimed at promoting democracy, diversity, and equity. White’s work is celebrated for its focus on addressing social justice issues and her commitment to improving the lives of marginalized communities through activism, education, and public engagement.

 Costley White, who previously worked as a journalist on an Emmy-nominated team at NOW on PBS, has become a leading voice in discussions around race, media, and politics. Her book, Raising the Volume: How the News Media Created the Tea Party (Oxford, 2018), examines the rise of the Tea Party in American news media. Her most recent co-edited book, Media and January 6th (Oxford, 2024) is a collection that examines the media and the democratic failures emblematized by the 2021 attempted coup. As a scholar-activist, Costley White’s work bridges the gap between academia and the public, fostering democratic outcomes and humanizing differences through hands-on, community-based initiatives.

One of Costley White’s nominators noted: “Prof. Costley White embodies community engagement as a vital component of her work and squarely centers community collaboration ongoingly in her role as the Director of the SOMA Justice organization in her local community in NJ, and her focus and work as a multimedia community engaged researcher.

As expressed by another nominator, “What I find most significant, innovative, and ground-breaking about Prof. Costley White’s approach is that she always seeks to make her work’s results accessible widely in the context of their community of origin—taking an active participatory engagement approach from a project’s front-end conceptualization, design and collection, all the way to the Results distribution and sharing…[she] demonstrates a commitment to multimodality and multiperspectivity in public humanities, public policy, and social science research. We need more of this type of work at in journalism studies and communication; Dr. Costley White can help us get there, with greater recognition, resources, and support for this type of multi-modal research.”

Reflecting on the award, Khadijah Costley White expressed her gratitude, saying, “I’m really proud to be the inaugural recipient of such an incredible award. I think the award is a reflection of our discipline showing a real commitment to publicly engage scholarship and research, and I’m so grateful that I come from a school and department that support that work.”

Kathryn Greene: Mark L. Knapp Award in Interpersonal Communication

Professor of Communication Kathryn Greene will receive the prestigious Mark L. Knapp Award in Interpersonal Communication, which recognizes career-long contributions to the study of interpersonal communication. Greene’s extensive research over her 30+ year career has significantly advanced the field, particularly through her work on the health disclosure decision-making model and communication processes within marginalized communities.

Greene’s scholarship is known for its practical implications, particularly in the healthcare sector, where she has collaborated with clinical partners to examine how people manage privacy and disclose sensitive health information. Her work has not only contributed to theoretical developments but also influenced real-world applications, including interventions and patient engagement strategies.

One of Greene’s nominators emphasized the impact of her work: “Since 1990, Greene has been publishing on stigma and its influences on interpersonal relationships at a time when very few people were doing so. Her HIV/AIDS disclosure work in this real-world context continues to serve as foundational for more recent applied HIV disclosure, stigma, and privacy communication research.”

Another nominator succinctly noted, “Dr. Kathryn Greene’s body of top-tier interpersonal communication research has been some of the most influential in the Communication discipline.”

In receiving the award, Kathryn Greene shared, “I’m honored to be recognized for my research program in interpersonal communication; my decades-long focus on how people manage privacy with health issues has contributed to theory development, intervention creation, and engagement with patients and communities.”

Khadijah Costley White and Kathryn Greene exemplify the power of communication scholarship to drive social change, foster understanding, and impact communities both inside and outside academia.

Visit SC&I’s Journalism and Media Studies Department and Communication Department web pages for more information.

Image: SC&I