The Congrats Keep Comin'--This time, grad students

The graduate students have been busy in the Department of Telecommunications over the past semester as well. Let's start with research. Congratuations to Sungkyoung Lee who is the first member of the ICR to collect and present research data using the fMRI. She was able to conduct an experiment looking at how the brain responds to either real-life celebrity faces, or faces of animals, or faces of animated people or animated animals (from Disney cartoons, for example). Here is a picture of her presenting to her poster at the Indiana Neuroimaging Symposium in late April:

If you would like a copy of her poster email me and I'll pass it on to you.

Secondly, congratulations to Spencer Stuart and the entire group of graduate students involved in GameZombie.TV. I've blogged on GZ before when it first got started. But, it has gotten bigger and better. And...it has earned a Webby Award. The equivalent of the Academy Awards of the internet, apparently. Here's the official IU press release and a link to a related story in the Bloomington Herald-Times.

Grad students in Telecommunications at IU are given freedom to design their own programs around their own interests...and the results can be astounding.

Congratulations Part II

So, I'm sitting in the Ballroom at Le Centre Sheraton in Montreal. It is the International Communication Association conference, and it has, of course, been a blast both socially and intellectually. But! I promised myself that before I could blog about what's been going on here I would need to finish the promised installments of congraulations to people associated with the Department of Telecommunications. Since I focused on undergraduate students last time, let me turn the spotlight onto some great news for faculty.

Congratulations to Mike McGregor who was promoted to Full Professor at the same time that Mark Deuze and I were promoted to Associate Professor. Mike has been an important member of the department since 1983 when he joined us following a position as council for the FCC. He is a past Department Chair and currently serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Another long-time contributor to the Department and IUB in general is Herb Terry, who was recently named the President of the Bloomington Faculty Council. The BFC represents the faculty in decisions affecting the operation of the campus. Congrats to Herb!

And, the department continues to be a place where important research and production takes place in the area of virtual worlds and gaming. As a testament to this, congratulations to Ted Castronova for receiving a grant from the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland and Atlanta to build a browser-based virtual world called Greenland which will be sued to study the history of money.

And, also bringing in a grant related to virtual worlds is Lee Sheldon who is part of a team of IUB researchers funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to create a game called "The Skeleton Chase" which will evaluate the extent to which game interventions can influence physical activity and other relevant healthy behaviors among college student populations." Here's the official IU press release.

Wow! Lots to be excited about at IU Telecomm.

Playing catch-up--Congratulations Part 1

I have been so terribly delinquent on blogging. And, honestly, I think that the main culprit has been Twitter. Those quick 140-character updates make it very easy to feel like you are connecting with people.

So, I'm going to be trying to play catch-up for the next few entries.
A lot of GREAT things have been happening in the Department of Telecommunications that I want to recognize.

First, I am very pleased to report that both my colleague Mark Deuze and I received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor! This is a long process...that I have blogged about here and here. I am glad to have it behind me. And, it feels better EVERY DAY.

Secondly, as I have mentioned many times before, our department has extremely talented students. And, in April at the Multivisions conference, we recognized nine of them with departmental scholarships.

So, again, with apologies for being more than a month late...congratulations all:

Bannerman Award-- Thomas W. Wilson
Brewer Award-- Seth Tober
Chairman’s Award-- Mathew Bregger
Darragh Award -- Xiaofei Wang
Johnson Scholarship -- Craig Shank
Norvelle Scholarship-- Alison McMillan
Shull Scholarship--Mary Cho & Allison Conway
Murphy Award--Jessica Moore