On May 19, 2024, SC&I Associate Professor of Communication Shawnika Hull delivered the commencement address to the students, faculty, parents and other guests who gathered for the Communication Major Graduation Celebration held by the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, at the Benjamin Franklin Ballroom, Sheraton University City.
Hull, who holds a Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication, is a health communication scholar whose research focuses on reducing racial inequities in HIV incidence through community-engaged, applied communication science. She develops, implements, and evaluates theoretically grounded communication interventions focused on impacting individual and social-structural barriers to HIV prevention. This research is informed by and developed in close collaboration with community partners.
Her expertise includes qualitative (i.e. focus groups) and quantitative (i.e. surveys, experiments) data collection and analytical methods. Her research has been funded through various institutional, non-profit (i.e., MAC AIDS Fund) and governmental mechanisms (i.e., NIH, CDC) and published in communication and public health journals. Her rigorous, theoretically grounded, collaborative approach to research informs health communication theorizing and practice. Hull has served as a Visiting Professor in the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.
Focusing on the value of the knowledge and skills the students gained as Communication majors, Hull told the graduating class, “You are now trained in one of the most important things there is: communication . . . you have cultivated a skill set, a perspective, and the ability to take a critical stance in your understanding of communication processes. You have an understanding of the ways the world is shaped and reflected through communication, by the stories we tell, how we tell those stories, what and who is in the story, and who is left out, and what does that say about us, and how we live and how we thrive. And because of this training, you are uniquely prepared to really move the needle on things that are crucial to the future of our democracy, our culture, public health, science, history, humanity.
“You could not have chosen a more important topic to study, but you already know this. Communication is a web that stitches us together. It's in everything - everything happens through it, so you are trained to wield an immensely powerful tool, and it is a tool you can choose to do with it what you will, but today I want to urge you to focus this power you wield. Use it towards something important and good. What I'm suggesting is that you find your purpose and move with a sense of urgency because the state of the world demands it.”
Watch the full lecture on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I4wB2dtGI8
Learn more about the Communication Department on the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.
