College of Communication and Information doctoral candidate Traci Lively recently won the Tennessee Communication Association (TCA) Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award.
The award recognizes outstanding graduate student research in communication. TCA is a professional organization comprised of leading communication scholars, faculty, and students within the state.
“I was a little shocked,” Lively said. “This is my first academic award in the PhD program, so it was really exciting.”
Lively presented her research at the annual TCA convention in September. Her work compares how Knox County and Metro Nashville public school districts promote their performing arts programs within their school systems. Lively said her goal was to provide educators with the negatives and positives of their existing promotion efforts of performing arts programs and ways they can improve.
Lively said many of the educators and academics gathered at the annual TCA convention were receptive to her research.
“It was a real eye opener for them to see how vital performing arts is to education, and how little it is distributed and promoted within certain cities in Tennessee,” Lively said.
Shortly after winning the TCA award, Lively learned she also won the 2025 National Communication Association (NCA) Nonverbal Communication Division Top Student Paper award. She said the Nonverbal Communication Division was added this year to NCA’s roster of 52 divisions representing fields of study within the association’s special interest groups.
Lively’s paper, The Feedback Tango: Understanding the Performer’s Response, explores feedback dancers receive from instructors in a professional dance organization and its impact on helping them reach their full potential. She will present this paper at the 2025 NCA Annual Convention in Denver in November.
Founded in 1914, the NCA is the largest communication association in the United States. The membership-based association supports communication scholars, teachers and practitioners’ research, teaching, and advocacy to advance communication scholarship, teaching, and practice.
For more information, visit natcom.org.