The College of Communication and Information welcomes seven new faculty and staff members for the 2020-21 school year.
The new year also brings two familiar faces to administrative roles. Professor Beth Avery Foster became the new Director of the School of Advertising and Public Relations on August 1. Chancellor’s Professor and Board of Visitors Professor Carol Tenopir was named interim director of the School of Information Sciences when SIS Professor and Director Diane Kelly was named UT Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs.
New Faculty
Guy Harrison (Assistant Professor, Journalism and Electronic Media) has a PhD in Journalism and Mass Communication from Arizona State University. His research areas include constructions of gender and race in mass mediated sport and sport on television and in film. His dissertation is: “On the Sidelines: Post-Feminism, Neoliberalism, and the American Female Sportscaster Subjectivity.” He comes to CCI from Youngstown State University where he was an assistant professor in the Department of Communication.
Jiangen He (Assistant Professor, Information Sciences) has a PhD in Information Science from Drexel University. His areas of expertise include scholarly and scientific communication, scientometrics and informatics, information visualization, machine learning, and social factors of AI systems. He received a 2020 Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship to support his dissertation, “Predictive and Visual Analytics of Scientific Development.”
Ben Horne (Assistant Professor, Information Sciences) has a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Computer Science. His research interests include news veracity detection and disinformation tactic analysis, human-centered machine learning and applications, and analyzing unsafe online communities and platforms. He is the co-founder of The MeLa Lab, a group of researchers working on problems related to online news and media. His dissertation is: “Robust News Veracity Detection.”
Mustafa Oz (Assistant Professor, Journalism and Electronic Media) has a PhD in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. His dissertation is: “Discussing Controversial Issues on Social Media: Examining the Role of Affordances, Fear of Isolation and De-Individuation.” His research interests include social media, political communication, and the global and local aspects of new media and social change. He comes to CCI from Southern Indiana University where he was an assistant professor in the Department of Communication.
Ericka Patillo (Clinical Assistant Professor, Information Sciences) has a PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her areas of expertise include academic libraries, management, and music librarianship. She has spent more than 20 years of her career as a library leader in higher education and most recently served for three years as the Associate Dean for Public Services and Engagement for three years at Appalachian State University. Her dissertation is: “The Middle Manager Role in Academic Libraries.”
New Staff
Amy Forrester (Assistant Director, Center for Information and Communication Studies) became the permanent assistant director for CICS after holding the interim title since October 2019. She spent the last five years at UT in program manager and research roles with CICS and the Y12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. She is a graduate of CCI, having earned her master’s degree in Information Sciences in 2016. She developed and launched the open access e-journal, Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, o=u8 for 12 years with ProQuest.
Byron Keys (Advisor I, CCI Undergraduate Advising Center) joined CCI’s Undergraduate Advising Center after spending the last three years as an academic advisor at Mississippi Valley State University where he was also an adjunct professor. He holds a master’s degree in mass communication and media studies from Arkansas State University.