Now accepting applications for College Lecturer
to teach Public Relations and Social Media

Our new Assistant Professor, Dr. Chih-Hui Lai has won the National Communication (Small Group Division) Laura Crowell Dissertation Award with her dissertation “Living History with the Internet: Probing the Sustainability of Mixed-Mode Groups through an Ecological and Evolutionary Lens”  The award was presented in November at the conference in Orlando.

A recent graduate of Rutgers University, Dr. Lai's dissertation was directed by James Katz and Marya Doerfel; Jennifer Gibbs, and Barry Wellman served as committee members.

Below are the comments provided by the chair of the Awards Committee about Chih-Hui’s dissertation:

“Committee members found your dissertation to have the type of breadth and depth that characterize the very best dissertations. They were impressed with your selection of an interesting, real place for groups to form and then following those groups through their development, using sophisticated methodological techniques, excellent grounding in the literature, and a theoretical perspective that was well married to the data. The result is a dissertation that contributes to the literature in important ways by examining the relationship between social media and face-to-face interaction on group outcomes.”

Congratulations Chih-Hui!