Dan Lane will be a fellow of the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement for 2026-2027. These scholars and practitioners will spend the next eighteen months examining pressing issues impacting expression, higher education and democracy. This new cohort’s research will build on the Center’s rich body of work equipping students, staff, faculty and other higher education professionals with tools and resources to navigate the evolving challenges facing colleges and universities today. Dan’s project is “AI as a Civic Educator: Artificial Intelligence and the Civic Future of American College Students.”

In 1998, the GSA established the Travis Dixon GSA Service Award to recognize graduate student Travis Dixon’s many years of service to the GSA. In 2002, the GSA renamed the Dixon-Levy GSA Service Award to recognize graduate student Alan Levy’s many years of service to the GSA. The dual name of the award acknowledges that service to graduate students at UC Santa Barbara comes in many forms, not only through serving as an elected GSA officer but also through the advocacy of graduate student interests in various ways. Bedlam Oak won the 2026 award.

Kyungin Kim won a Graduate Student Association Excellence in Teaching Award, which recognizes graduate students who have shown excellence and gone above and beyond as teachers at UC Santa Barbara.

Professor Weber and former graduate student, now Associate Professor at UC Davis, Richard Huskey won the 2026 Outstanding Contribution to Communication Science Award from the Communication Science and Biology Interest Group of the International Communication Association. The Award is granted biennially to recognize exceptional empirical research or theoretical contributions to the field of communication communication science, such as standout peer-reviewed journal article or book published within the two years prior.

Veronica Wilson was awarded the initial 2026 McKenzie Research Accelerator Fellowship. This donor gift is matched by Graduate Division Funds in order to provide an award for top-ranked students with substantial research expenses, and free the winner up from employment to devote their full attention to their research.

Howie Giles and two co-editors (Markowitz and Clementson) received the 4th. Jake Harwood Outstanding Book Award from the International Association of Language and Social Psychology, at the 2026 conference in Tucson, AZ. The title is New directions for, and panaceas arising from, Communication Accommodation Theory (2025), published by Peter Lang.

Shaunak Sastry was appointed upon his hiring at UC Santa Barbara, for the Department of Communication, as the new Director of the Pahl Center for the Study of Critical Social Issues (https://pahlcenter.ucsb.edu/) in the Division of Social Sciences. Shaunak has made such an impression on the Pahls that they decided yesterday to donate an additional $1 million to the Division to sponsor an Endowed Chair for him.

Frances Jereb won the URCA (Undergrad Research and Creative Activities) SLAM on Monday May 14 2026. Her presentation was on her undergraduate thesis, "Remembering Our Green Selves: Exploring Climate Attitudes Through Identity and Memorable Messages." The thesis was developed under the guidance of Professor Guadalupe Madrigal and further developed with Professors Gordon Abra and Jennifer Gibbs in the Department of Communication’s Senior Honors Program. The Undergraduate Research Slam is a competition where participants have just three minutes to give a dynamic presentation of their research project (https://urca.ucsb.edu/urca-week/slam).

Kyungin Kim has received a 2026-2027 Graduate Division Dissertation Fellowship for her dissertation: The Communicative Production of Disenfranchisement and Resistance among Family Members of Formerly Incarcerated Individuals.