One of the events that doctoral students and academic professionals do along with teaching and conducting research is presenting at various research conferences. Whether it is a national conference or international conference or a school based conference– they are all part of the research process. I got a chance to participate in a conference today. The University of Tennessee College of Communication and Information had its 31st Research Symposium today at the University Center on campus. The theme of the research symposium this year was “Power and Politics.” We had faculty and students from not only Tennessee, but other univerisities such as Alabama, Boston University, and Missouri come and present their research papers. It was really a great place to talk to other graduate students and faculty working and studying in the communications field– what a great networking opportunity! 🙂
The day got off to an early start for me because the paper that I was presenting along with my adviser Dr. Michael Palenchar was in the first session that started at 8:15 a.m. There were four paper sessions total and a poster session that was held in the morning, and we also had a great key note speaker. We had Scott Keener, Director of Survey Research for Pew Research Center, talk to us about the future of survey research in mass communication. It was very interesting and insightful! 🙂
Registration for the event was all ready in place by the time I got to campus (Diana, Bobbie, and Shu did an amazing job with registration) and all I had to do was load up the Power Point Presentation and present the research paper. Our research pape was titled “Practitioner or Academic Approach: The Current Direction of U.S. Undergraduate Public Relations Programs.” This was a great project to work on and a wonderful opportunity to look in depth to the current situation of what is happening in public relations education.
Presenting research reminds me a lot of track meet competitions. I get really excited about sharing research and talking directly to the audience– it is a lot of fun! We had a pretty full room and it was so great to see all of the first-year doctoral students come and hear the session presentations. Thank you Tatjana, Stephanie, Darrell, Jason, and Monica for coming and being so supportive! 🙂 I would also like to thank Simon and Shu as well– thank you for coming and taking pictures for me! 🙂 My friends Sabrina, Kennon, Shu, Aya, Carol, David, Taewoo, Julie, and Anthony all presented as well at the Research Symposium and all did a fantastic job! 🙂 Congrats to you all! 🙂
At the conclusion of the research symposium, there were four awards that were given out. Sabrina won best Master’s paper for her research paper titled “I Was Framed: A Perception-Driven Crisis Even” and Aya won best Ph.D. paper for her study titled “Understanding Management of International Media Training Overseas.” The paper that Dr. Palenchar and I wrote won for “Best Faculty & Student Collaboration Paper” for the conference. Very exciting! 🙂 Dr. Palenchar won in the same category last year along with Bernardo, and I was tied for “Best Poster” last year. It was an honor and priviledge to present at the UT Research Symposium, and I am already looking forward to next year! 🙂
Hope you all have a wonderful day! 🙂
Best Wishes,
Karen
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