What can I do with a degree in Communication Studies? New Communication Studies Faculty Three new faculty members will join the department in Fall 2009. After nationwide searches, the department extended offers to Suzanne Enck-Wanzer, Darrel Enck-Wanzer, and Cindy Gordon.
UNT Success at The National Debate Tournament Earlier this semester, we posted a story indicating that UNT Debate was ranked among the top 16 debate teams in the country and invited to the National Debate Tournament. The team competed at the NDT this past weekend and finished by ranking 12th in the nation in this highly competitive season finale. The team of Kuntal Cholera and Grant Peretz compiled a 6-win 2-loss record in the preliminary debates (winning against Northwestern, Minnesota, Baylor, the University of Texas at Dallas, Mary Washington College, and Emory University and losing against Wake Forest and a different Northwestern team). The team then went on to win a double octafinals debate against Emory University in Atlanta. The team lost in octafinals to Northwestern University in a very close debate. As is common with modern debate tournaments, teams are not only ranked based on their wins and losses against other teams, individual speakers are also compared to the rest of the field. While we can only logisitically debate eight other universities during the preliminary debates, speaker points, as they are called, evaluate speakers across the entire field because judges assign these points by asking how good an individual debater is compared to all others (even throughout time). On this score, UNT achieved the top mark! Kuntal Cholera was named the top speaker of the National Debate Tournament late Sunday night. This means quite literally that he was definitively ranked as the nation's best policy debater for this year.
This is UNT's first top speaker award and it is a very special honor. Past top speakers include David Zarefsky (now Dean at Northwestern University), James Q. Wilson (noted Political Scientist and best-selling author) and George Schell (Los Angeles' highest conviction rate prosecutor). Even Harvard's Lawrence Tribe, who many said revolutionized academic debate and is now the nation's foremost consitutional law scholar, was unable to claim this title. The top speaker award at the National Debate Tournament receives a gold watch for the individual as well as a special traveling trophy that bears the names of all past winners. This traveling trophy is a Tiffany bowl which travels to the institution of the winner for one year. (Tiffany's has only ever commissioned two bowls, this is one, the other one was a personal gift from Ronald Reagan to Mikhail Gorbachev.) Mr. Cholera is only the second Indian American to win the award. This is the first time a Texas debater has won the speaker’s award since 1987, and the first time a public university of the state of Texas has won the title since 1969. He is the nation's best and a product of UNT.
The Mean Green descend upon Sooner Nation March 13-14, 2009 – Two undergraduate student research groups represented UNT recently at the Sooner Communication Conference hosted by the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. CONGRATULATIONS to Matthew Davis (now a graduate student in the department!) and Melodee Sova for presenting the TOP UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PAPER. Research papers were produced as part of the course assignment for COMM 4020: Communication Theory taught by Dr. Wittenberg-Lyles. During their stay, Station Two of the Norman City Fire Department provided a tour of the station facilities – and a ride in the fire truck!
Affinity-Seeking and Self-Disclosure on Facebook* “IDK What U R Saying”: Examining the Effects of New Technology on Parent and |
||||||
