Research Awards
We offer our students many opportunities to stand out from the "rest of the pack." For example, we have a very strong student research program. Our majors routinely have their papers accepted for presentation at the Theodore Clevenger Undergraduate Honors Conference. We've won the top paper award at that conference twice! Last year, two of our students' papers ranked in the top 10 among 90 papers submitted in Louisville, Kentucky. Both papers earned the department's Excellence in Interpersonal Research Award. Next year, three of our students will travel to the National Communication Association's conference in Chicago to present their research: two of those papers have been designated as top papers.
Moreover, if a student has a particularly strong interest in a theory or research project, we will bring in scholars from other universities to help them with their research. For example, three of our students decided to do an experiment using Expectancy Violations Theory, so we brought in Dr. Jerold Hale from the University of Georgia. He is the co-author of that theory, and it was a very successful partnership.
