Updates to Publication Web Page

I've been busy as heck lately...working on getting papers assigned to reviewers for the Information Systems division of ICA has been a good portion of the time.

But, I've also had some good news lately.

Two new research publications have come out recently, and another one accepted for publication...but it won't come out until December, 2009!

Find out more about them on my publications page.

ICR alumni's research garners interest from Newsweek

Congratulations to James Angelini, a professor at University of Delaware, who was recently interviewed by Newsweek magazine about a recent publication he co-authored in Journal of Advertising.

You can read Angelini's impressions of the whole thing on his Blog: The Comm & Gender Spot.

International Visitors to the ICR

Another exciting day in the ICR. I'm just back from my favorite conference, SPR. Sorry to not have blogged from there, just so busy seeing extremely interesting research! In fact, I told my colleague, Paul Bolls, that I was leaving with terrific ideas...and 11 articles that I just HAVE to read!

The conference was held in Austin TX, which I didn't find very interesting. But, the day afterwards I visited my aunt & uncle who live in San Antonio. Here's proof...a picture of me in front of a closed Alamo!

So, now I'm back and happy to have a weekend that is pretty lazy to allow me to catch up on stuff. This past week, though, we were fortunate enough to be visited by a group of 5 professors from National Chengchi University in Taiwan. They are interested in designing a research facility and wanted to see what the ICR was all about. So, with the help of several graduate students, Annie Lang, Walt Gantz, Sharon Mayell (the ICR Lab Manager) and I showed:

Dr.Wei Wen, Chung, Dean of Communication College
Dr. Herng, Su, Chair of Journalism Dept.
Dr. Shang Ren, Kwan, Chair of Radio & TV Dept.
Dr. Tsai Yen, Li, Chair of Information Science Dept.
Dr. Pao Fang, Chang, Associate Professor of Journalism Dept.

some of the types of studies that we can do in the facility.

Here's Sungkyoung Lee talking about one of the studies:

And Annie explaining the importance of understanding context when interpreting psychophysiological measures:

It was a very pleasant visit and I was very proud to show off the ICR.

Visit to Ohio State Successful

It's been 10 days since I've updated. Sorry. Busy time.

Today, in fact, I was a part of a terrific panel as our Department's Colloquium Series.

Maybe more on that later.

But I wanted to share a little story.

Ten years ago or so I was an Assistant Professor at University of Alabama in the Telecommunication and Film Department. And, in order to continue my work I needed to get a physiology lab up and running. I had inherited all the equipment...it was in a storage room but I wasn't sure how to get it functional.

In our our lab use a program called VPM, written by a Professor Ed Cook at UAB to collect our physiology data. Because he was so geographically close to me in Tuscaloosa, I asked him to come down and consult with me. He was gracious enough to agree and soon the Media and Psychophysiology Lab was functional. I'll never forget his kindness.

And I remembered him fondly when Zheng Wang --an IU Telecomm. PhD. who is now at Ohio State--asked me if I would come and help her set up her lab in Columbus. She, too had inherited some equipment that were in somewhat a state of storage.

So, last weekend I went to visit her in Columbus and had a great time. Here I am with Brutus the OSU mascot...which is a nut as far as I can tell...but here he is dressed up as an astronaut.

And later in the weekend I was able to find my way into the OSU stadium which I understand is called "The Horseshoe." Apparently there was a big game that weekened between OSU and USC...but it was an way game as you can tell by the "crowd" around me.

And, most importantly, I'm glad to report that the Wang Lab is now all ready to collect data.

Go Zheng!

Orienting to Volume Changes--More IFS data!!!

Classes start for the Fall Semester tomorrow...well, today for those on a Tuesday/Thursday teaching schedule. And, I've spent the past few days getting syllabi ready for the coming term. One of the fortunate things is that I'm teaching "This is your Brain on Media,", the class I taught for IFS, again this semster as an S105 seminar. I was therefore able to keep what worked during IFS and revise what didn't.


As you may suspect if you've been following this blog lately, one thing that did work well was the student experiments. And, it's time to report on another one.


This was the second "Attention Group." They were interested in abrupt changes in volume in media and whether such a change would result in the automatic allocation of cognitive resources to processing the message. This is a phenomenon known as the orienting response. At first, the group seemed intent upon testing this in movie clips...but they had trouble finding examples...even though they were "sure they had seen them"!

In the end, music was what they selected (which The Audio Prof did not discourage!). The found four songs where the music was very quiet for an extended time and then got very loud. Furthermore, two of the songs were familar (Ironic from Alanis Morrisette and Bring Me to Life from Evanescence) and two of them were unfamiliar local bands that one of the students knew.


The students collected heart rate data during the songs presentations, which were played in random order to 4 other students. Then, they identified the points in each song where the volume change occurred. Here's what they found:

Now an orienting response is identified with a momentary deceleration in heart rate. And, this graph shows changes from the point at which the volume change occurred (the place where both lines are at "0" on the left side of the figure). And, you see that heart rate went down for both types of songs...so, they oriented to the volume changes just like the students thought would happen. Plus, they wondered whether familiarity with the song would have an impact. And, it seems that it did...the orienting responses were larger if the subject didn't know the song. Makes sense, right?

Congratulations to "Attention Group, Music" members:

David Benmen, Michelle Feder, Eliot Suitor-Feld, and Alexandra Wojtal

A look at some IFS data

I'm sure I have said this at least once over the last three weeks, but IFS is extremely intensive. Not only for the students, but also for the professors. At church this morning I saw two other professors who are in the program, and all three of us are exhausted. I don't know whether to feel discouraged or uplifted that the other two professors have done IFS before...and are still wiped out!

My family has gone off on this hot and muggy Indiana afternoon to go swimming at a friend's pool. I decided to stay home, somewhat because I wanted to get a blog posting up, but also because I'm just tired.

Looking back on the three-week experience, I am amazed at how far the students and I were able to get. Over the course of 15 days, four different student groups were able to generate their own original research hypotheses, identify the independent and dependent variables in them, find examples of media stimuli to satisfy the different levels of the independent variable, collect physiology data as dependent variables, analyze that data and present it to the class!!

Over the next few blog postings I've like to give you a sense of the very interesting questions and results they generated. The first week was devoted to questions about attention to media. In the ICR we primarily use heart rate as an indication of attention/cognitive effort. The first group to collect data wondered whether people would pay different amounts of attention to television stories depending upon whether they were exposed to audio-video presentations, video-only presentations, or audio-only presentations. Those of you familiar with this type of media research, will find this question to be highly influenced by the reading the students did in the Reeves & Nass book entitled The Media Equation. Of course, as an instructor, this made me ecstatic because it meant they were actually reading the textbook!

So, the members of "attention group lizard" found segments of video online from the National Geographic Channel (that's where they got their name) and manipulated them to meet the different levels of their independent variable. And although, like all the data I'll present from IFS, they only had time to run three or four of their classmates through the experiment, here's what they found:

It's obvious that most of the differentiation is in the early part of each message, which appears on the left-hand side of the graph. Substantially lower heart rate (indicating more attention) occurs during the "monkey" video clip. In this video clip there was only video in the students concluded that subjects paid more attention early on during that portion of the stimulus presentation because we are quite unpracticed at processing television shows without any sort of audio. Helping them to reach this conclusion, was the fact that the least amount of attention was paid during the clip that contains both audio and video -- the same way we are so accustomed to watching television.

Congratulations to the members of this group:

Andrew Platkin · Jeremy Rytych · Adam Siemer · Tommy Scott · Logan Gants

and best of luck during your time here at IU!

This is your brain on media now online

I have 90% finished the syllabus for S105--The Intensive Freshmen Seminar Version. It's now online.

Took me a while to wrap my head around how to fill 3-hours of class time. There's NO WAY I was going to fill it all with lecture. Students would shoot me! But, with field trips and demonstrations and such, I'm really looking forward to it.

Of course, there's still a lot to do to prepare for in the remaining 2 weeks.

Spent the last half of the afternoon in the ICR with a couple of grad students. We're trying to figure out how to measure eye movements so we can use it as a basic eyetracker for those interested in such studies.

FOUR doctors in the house

Congratulations to Dr. Narine Yegiyan who today successfully defended her dissertation entitled

Experimental investigation of resource allocation and memory for central and
peripheral detail as a function of motivational activation

One of the key tenets of her disseratation was the dual-motivation systems concept which suggests that human beings have an "approach" (appetitive) system and an "avoid" (aversive) system, each of which act in different ways.

After her defense, Dr. Yegiyan presented members of her committee with T-shirts that had a well-known (at least to us) graphical representation of the activation fuctions of the appetitive and aversive systems.

Here's a picture of Drs. Yegiyan, Grabe, Potter & Lang (the latter 3 proudly wearing their new shirts).

Narine begins her new position as an Assistant Professor at UC Davis in the Fall.

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.

Good news and a co-active website

Got word yesterday that an article was accepted for publication!

Potter, R.F, Callison, C., Chambers, T., Edison, A. (in press). Radio’s Clutter Conundrum: Better Memory for Ads, Worse Attitudes Toward Stations. International Journal of Media Management.

That's always a way to make my day, I'm such an academic!
And, this one was a long-time-comin.' The delay was all on me, though. Carted this data and manuscript around with me since my days at Alabama.

And, now, here's a link to a website that is very "co-active." In other words, it's a site that makes you feel positive and negative at the same time. Check it out, but be careful, it's rather addicting.

http://www.3trillion.org

Another great year for IU Telecomm @ ICA

One of my favorite academic associations is the International Communications Association.

Luckily, I belong to a Department that not only values participation in ICA, but is filled with people who do great work. Check out this press release:


March, 2007 - Two Top Paper Awards Among Seventeen Departmental Papers Accepted for Presentation at International Communications Association Annual Meeting in Montreal, May 22-26.

Information Systems Division
Top Paper Award:
Zheng Wang, Annie Lang & Jerome Busemeyer-- Motivational Processing and Choice Behavior during Television Viewing: An Integrative Dynamic Approach.

Ted Castronova--A Virtual World Experimental Test of the Law of Demand

Seth Finn, Robert F. Potter & Sungkyoung Lee--Every Word Matters: Correlating Word Information Value In Persuasive Messages with Physiological Arousal Responses.

Satoko Kurita, Sungkyoung Lee, Zheng Wang & Annie Lang --How much is too much?: Media Structure, Content, and Cognitive Load, and Overload

Robert F. Potter, Annie Lang, Josh Brown, Rena Fukunaga & Adam Krawitz-- Brain Activation During Risk: The Influence of Trait Motivation on ACC Activation During Choice and Consequence.

Robert F. Potter, Paul D. Bolls, Jacob Koruth, Kevin Wise, Rachel Bailey & Annie Lang--Heart Rate Variability Analysis Suggests a Reinterpretation of Cardiac Responses During Media Messages.

P.G. Nadorff, Sungkyoung Lee, Brian Wilson, Annie Lang, Bernice Pescosolido & Jack Martin-- Mass Media and Stigma: How portrayals of mental illness impact social stigma.

Andrew Weaver, Soyoung Bae & Robert F. Potter--Physiological Responses to Manipulation of Violence in a Primetime Drama.

Brian Wilson & Julia R. Fox-- Exploring the Effects of Audience Laughter on Information Processing

Narine S. Yegiyan, Brian D. Wilson, Ya Gao, Sharon Mayell, Zheng Joyce Wang & Annie Lang-- Approach? Avoid? Both? Processing Coactive Motivational Media Messages

Game Studies Division
Top Paper Award:
Chase Bowen Martin & Mark Deuze-- The Independent Production of Culture: A Digital Games Case Study

Law & Policy Division
Xiaofei Wang & David Waterman -- The Economics of Foreign Language Media in the U.S.: An Empirical Study of Radio Markets

Mass Communication Division
Betsi Grabe & Erik P. Bucy-- The struggle for control: Visual framing, news coverage, and image handling of presidential candidates, 1992-2004.

Betsi Grabe, Narine Yegiyan & Rasha Kamhawi-- Experimental evidence of the knowledge gap: Message arousal, motivation, and time delay.

Sojung C. Kim & Erik P. Bucy-- International Crisis News and the Evaluation of Threat: Viewer Responses to News Coverage of the North Korean Nuclear Test

Global Communication and Social Change Division
Enyonam Osei-Hwere & Patrick Osei-Hwere -- Nollywood: A multilevel analysis of the international flow of Nigerian video films.

Journalism Studies Division
Mark Deuze-- The Media Logic of Journalism

Great link forwarded by a former student

Several times a semester I remind my undergrads that, when they are rich and famous and working dutifully in the telecommunications industry, I would certainly appreciate it if they would remember to send me information and articles they come across that I could use in my current classes.

My thanks to Amy Alyward a former T344 student who sent me this terrific blog entry by Paul Grein of Yahoo Music.

It's a reminder of the importance of knowing the CRITERIA researchers base their findings on. In this case, the findings are the top music albums in the land. Turns out, the #2 album last week by numbers was Michael Jackson's 25th Anniversary Album of Thriller. Then, why doesn't it appear in the Billboard 200? Find out by reading Grein's article.

Find it here.

A Training Session on Media Lab

The weather was terrible. Ice pellets over about an inch of snow. I've never been a fan of creme brulle, but that's what walking on this stuff reminded me of. Even worse, though, was walking on the shovelled walks and plowed streets.

But, that wasn't enough to keep eight grad students from showing up for a tutorial on two great programs we use in the ICR--called Media Lab and Direct RT.

The ICR has a great set of grad students. Since I've been here, there has been a great tradition of the more senior ones teaching the newer ones about the research culture in the lab along with the software and hardware applications. While a lot of that takes place informally, we also periodically have more formal tutorials. Today, even with the bad weather, Sungkyoung Lee and Satoko Kurita gave a great introduction to the programs. And, the event couldn't have happened without the help of ICR Manager Sharon who set up all the equipment and organized everyone's schedules.

Here's some pictures

Scientists like to see EFFECTS--but does that taint our knowledge?

I'm an experimental scientist. I design experiments where I introduce one variable and see if it causes a change in people's response. For a simple example, I could introduce the variable of music into a group of radio ads and see if ads with background music caused people to say they were more likely to say they liked the ad.



And, I'm looking for an EFFECT. I want to see a statistical difference between the responses of those who heard the music ads and those who heard the non-music ads. If I don't find that effect I'm disappointed--and I'm primarily upset because I know that without finding such an effect it is highly unlikely that the manuscript of the study will get published. That's because scientists (and journal editors, and journal reviewers) like to see that their experimental manipulations have effects.



Of course, what I forget...as do other scientists, journal editors & reviewers is that a LACK OF EFFECT is still knowledge that we didn't have before. If theory gives me every reason to expect that music will lead to better liking of the ad...and music in fact doesn't then that should lead me to wonder why? Is there something about the particular music I chose? Or, maybe even more importantly, is there something wrong or imprecise about the theory I've used? This lack of effect is something that other scientists should know about so they can begin wondering about the possible reasons for it. But, without the ability to get the LACK OF EFFECT paper published...no one but my grad students will know about the result. [And, as an aside, they will indirectly learn that it isn't as important as the EFFECT paper].

Now...this bias toward wanting to show that something caused and effect is, arguably, of no harm at all in the study of mass communications. But, consider details of a report I heard on the radio the other day. Apparently, a group of medical doctors have investigated both the reports submitted to the FDA and the manuscripts published associated with 74 studies conducted on the efficacy of 12 antidepressant drugs.

Figure this: Of the 74 studies, the FDA found 38--just about half--that were positive...showing those EFFECTS that scientists love so much. Of those 38, all but one were published.

Now, consider the 36 other studies...the ones that didn't show effects. Only three of those were published as "negative." There were eleven others that, according to the authors of the study, were published as finding "positive" effects...exactly the opposite conclusions arrived at by the FDA.

Now, if you figure that doctors read these journals...and, perhaps, drug companies refer to the conclusions of presented in these journals...then this is a big concern. The conclusion from the article is that this led to an increase in presumed effectiveness of 11-69%!!

Read the whole article here.

Something I'm Really Looking Forward To

When I find time to think about it, of course...
Indiana University is a big place...with lots of students attending it. Like more than 36,000.
IU also does a very nice job of designing programs to help make this place much smaller.

The Intensive Freshmen Seminar program is that type of program.
I first heard about the IFS from Mike McGregor during a faculty meeting several years ago. It sounded like someting I would like to do eventually...it was one of the things that I said I would wait for until after tenure. I figured that it was close enough to that time. So, I applied to teach a course that I'm calling "This is your brain on Media: How TV, Computer Games, and Radio Capture Your Attention and Play with your Emotions." And, it was accepted!

So, I won't be teaching my normal summer school stint of T340--Advertising...instead I'll have most of May, all of June and July to work on my research (which is a benefit, of course). Then the last 3 weeks of the summer break, August 4-22, I'll be spending 3 hours a day with 25 Freshmen teaching them about something I love to talk about: cognitive processing of media.

I'll post the syllabus for the course on my website as time grows closer (and as I find the time to finalize my ideas). But, for now I'm pretty excited to think about that opportunity in my future.

And, I'm also pretty proud to be one of THREE faculty in the Department who were chosen to be a part of the IFS in 2008. Here's a press release about that.

Not the only procrastinator

It's good to know that I'm not the only person who works on a "just in time...push it to the deadline" mentality. This is the first of two years I'm in charge of the paper competition for the Information Systems Division of the International Communications Association. The deadline was 11pm November 1st....last night.

It is now 6:22am the morning of November 2nd. Yesterday at this time the division had 43 papers submitted.

This morning there are 103.

I'd write more but I'm preparing for a colloquium presentation I'm giving to the faculty of my department.

When is it? Today at 12:30, of course.

Research that Compliments Teaching

Like many departments, the IU Department of Telecommunications publishes an alumni newsletter. Ours is called the Telecomment and I'm happy to say that many of the latest versions are now available online right here.

Maybe it's because I'm an alum of the doctoral program of the department, or maybe because graduate education is something that is a large part of my life these days, but the latest issue--on graduate education and research in the Department--is something that makes me feel fortunate to be a part of such a wonderful place. Read that particular issue here.

But, no matter where I worked, the following article by IU T'comm faculty member and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Arts and Sciences, truly captures the important role research plays in liberal arts education.

IU as a Research I Institution
by Annie Lang, Professor of Telecommunications and Associate Dean for
Research in The College of Arts and Sciences

Along with her roles as professor, highly-respected and funded researcher, and mentor to graduate students, Lang is in her third year as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Arts and Sciences. It is from this overarching vantage point that she discusses university research as it complements teaching.

Have you ever wondered what it means to be a major research university? It's a curious thing that by and large the 30,000 undergraduates who flock to the Bloomington campus, including the 800 or so who major in Telecommunications, do not come because of the word "research." Indeed, the word, to the extent they consider it at all, likely brings to mind memories of all-nighters in the library or an exhausting morning searching the web for information on some obscure topic in order to turn in one's term paper on time. But for the 1900 faculty who work at IUB, research or creative activity is likely the fundamental reason why they are here. It's a curious thing how poorly understood is the role of research in a major research university.

Have you ever wondered what universities do? Probably your answer is that universities educate the populace. And indeed, if you read the newspaper, watch TV, listen to your legislators, or talk to average Americans, you would get the impression that that is the primary goal of the University. But let’s take a look at the larger picture. The primary goal of a major university is to produce, store, and pass on knowledge. Knowledge, not graduates, is the fundamental commodity of universities. The storage of knowledge results in great libraries, great reference works, great museums, and great archives. The passing on of knowledge results in students, graduate students, and graduates. The production of knowledge is research.

America’s system of major research universities is the greatest producer of knowledge that has ever existed in the world. Those who attempt to quantify such things suggest that knowledge is being produced at a rate never before seen in history and much of that production happens in our universities. Every faculty member in a major research university is driven by the desire to understand something as it has never been understood before. Their research and creative activities vary fantastically depending on discipline and training but their over arching goal is the same. They are motivated by the desire to produce new knowledge and new creations.

Faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences at IU produce a fantastic variety of new knowledge. In the Fine and Performing Arts that knowledge may consist of a new play, a new technique in digital lighting design, a new interpretation of a classic play, a sculpture, an interactive digital event, or a new type of kiln for firing pottery. In the foreign languages it might be a new translation of a classic work or a linguistic analysis of how language influences culture. In the sciences it might be identifying the functional relationships between fruit fly genes and behavior, inventing a new material, modeling climate, searching for new articles, or understanding how brain architecture and function influence substance abuse. In the humanities it may be an historical analysis of human society, a new film, a new poem or novel.

Like our colleagues around the university, the faculty of the Department of Telecommunications engage in a wide variety of research and creative activities to produce new knowledge about how people use the media to communicate, new ways of communicating, and new communications. Indeed, our department is almost a microcosm of the wide variety of research and creative activity that occurs across the University. Some of our faculty are critics and interpreters of the modern media environment, others study how various aspects of mediated messages influence psychological, emotional, and physiological responses in media users, yet others produce new media forms and content, while some analyze the impact of governmental laws and policy on the media industry. The result of all this research activity is to improve our understanding of how media and media industries affect individual media users, society, and the world.

It is not uncommon for people to think that the university’s research and teaching mission are in conflict. They may feel that too much time is spent on research and not enough time on teaching. They may feel that faculty involvement in research distracts them from teaching. They may feel that too much money is spent on research and not enough money is spent on teaching. Certainly, any great university must balance its research and teaching missions. But, that balance is not the balance of two unrelated but weighty burdens, rather it is the task of balancing two weights which are completely connected to one another by a myriad of flexible cords. Imagine a dumbbell, but instead of a stiff metal rod connecting the two weights, there were a thousand metal filaments of different lengths and strength connecting the two weights. The task becomes not one of balancing: research up, teaching down; teaching up, research down. Instead, the task is strengthening the filaments and supporting both ends.

What are the connections between research and teaching? Perhaps the strongest link between the two is graduate education as most doctoral students are in training to become faculty. They are learning how to produce new knowledge and they are learning how to pass that knowledge on to the next generation. They are students of what is not yet known and they are teachers of students. But this is by no means the only link. Every day faculty bring new knowledge, new research, and new ideas which arise from their research into the classroom. Faculty at a research university are not teaching old ideas buried in a textbook written by someone else. Instead, they are teaching living, changing, evolving knowledge which they have helped to create. They are experts teaching knowledge so new it has yet to be archived in a textbook. Faculty and graduate students bring the excitement of discovery and the understanding that knowledge is ever changing and ever-growing into the classroom. The university provides a wealth of opportunities for students who want to participate in knowledge building.

Faculty research provides the opportunity for students of all levels to take part in the university’s central undertaking--production of new knowledge and creative activity. Funding for research and creative activity provides much of the capital to build the laboratories, to buy the equipment, and to provide the venues which allow all of our students to take part in this endeavor. The new knowledge produced enriches not only the lives of the students involved but also enriches our culture, our science, and the everyday lives of people around the world.

In my role as Associate Dean for Research I have been awed by the range and depth of research and creative activity occurring in the College. I have been privileged to talk to hundreds of faculty about their research and to try to help them find the support they need to succeed at their particular endeavor. It has been a pleasure for me to learn about everything from Anna Karenina to zebra fish, with stops along the way at Creole languages, mars rocks, mud flumes, the mathematics of oncology, neutrino detectors, Sylvia Plath, telescopes, virtual worlds, and X-ray crystallography to name a few. I hope you find this issue of Telecomment to be an equally interesting journey through the range of research and creative activity going on in Telecommunications here at IU.

Trying to do better

I've been trying to be more consistent about writing.
And, it's been working. More than it has in my recent memory.
Just finished a book chapter with two colleagues, and a journal submission with two others.
Now, I'm working on a journal article that has sat in my "to do" pile for longer than I'm even willing to admit to you.

And, this may be the best part, I'm actually ENJOYING writing again. That hasn't been a feeling I've associated with writing for a long time.

But...one of the reasons I must attribute my improved attitude AND productivity to is that I've stopped doing what, apparently, also afflicts Rob Long of Martini Shot. Listen to this podcast episode (it's only about 3 minutes long) here:

http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/ma/ma070919check_email

Or, you can also read the transcipt there as well...but even though the guy's a writer, his delivery on this is wonderful.

It's The Audio Prof...Not the Radio Prof

I have mentioned earlier that I am in my tenure year...and happy to report that the faculty of my department have voted to send my case up to the next levels of consideration. While that is a cause for momentary celebration, it is only the beginning of a LONG process. There are, indeed, next levels...seven of them (assuming I haven't forgotten one).

The case now goes to:
The College Committee
The Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences
The Dean of Faculties Committee
The Dean of Faculties
The University Provost
The University President
The Board of Trustees.

It's a long year. But tenure is a big deal--not only for the faculty candidate (trust me, it IS that), but also for the institution. So, they want to make sure that all those with a stake have a peek at every candidate.

Part of the documentation that the candidate must prepare is a personal statement explaining primarily how they came about their area of research interests...what they have done so far during their research careers...and what they will do later. So during that process I have been reminded of how important my experiences with radio were in guiding me to what I now do. Radio was an important companion for me as a child. It was an early career choice and what started my interest in exactly what attributes of radio messages can capture peoples' attention.

But, when I was a graduate student at IU, one of the most respected scholars in communication came to visit our department and give a talk to our lab group. His name is Byron Reeves, a Professor from Stanford. As is typical during informal talks like this one was, each grad student gave a brief introduction of their work. As you might expect, my introduction talked all about radio--explaining how I was interested in how radio messages capture attention, how we can make them more memorable, etc.

After I was through, Professor Reeves told me that I should not describe my interests as being in radio. Actually, what I was interested in, he taught me, wasn't the "box" called radio. It wasn't the delivery system...it was what was being delivered...it was AUDIO.

That was great advice. It took me a long time to break that "radio" habit. But eventually I did.

Not only did writing my tenure statement make me remember this formative event...but so did this article describing how even ad agencies are no longer saying they are interested in radio...with satelite and ipods and websites and radio all being used to deliver audio information. It's not just radio anymore.

That's why I'm not the Radio Prof.