Tammy Afifi and her research team received the Maher Institute's 2023 Innovative Research on Aging Awards - the Gold Award – for their publication Tammy Afifi, Nancy Collins, Kyle Rand, Chris Otmar, Allison Mazur, Norah E. Dunbar, Ken Fujiwara, Kathryn Harrison, and Rebecca Logsdon (2022) "Using Virtual Reality to Improve the Quality of Life of Older Adults with Cognitive Impairments and their Family Members who Live at a Distance" appearing in Health Communication. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10410236.2022.2040170

Kylie Woodman Receives a 2023 GSA Excellence in Teaching Award. The Graduate Student Association Excellence in Teaching Award (https://gsa.ucsb.edu/awards) recognizes graduate students who have shown excellence and gone above and beyond as teachers at UC Santa Barbara. Every year, it receives about 200 nominations. Selecting the few winners among this large pool of excellent graduate students is both challenging and inspiring.

Kylie Woodman and Rene Weber won a Top Poster Award in the Communication Science and Biology Poster Session at the recent International Communication Association conference in Toronto, Canada for "Compulsive Video Game Use and Reward Processing in Adolescents: A Competing Neurobehavioral Decision Systems Approach."

Walid Afifi is PI on a funded $50k course development grant from UC-Online. The grant is part of the UC-wide Community Engagement Network effort to create improved infrastructure for community-engaged, public-facing research and pedagogy across the UC. The proposed course (“Collaborating with Communities to Make Change: An Introduction”) will be developed in collaboration with multiple UCs and will serve as a UC-Online pilot course for a potential multi-course undergraduate certificate in Community Engaged Practice.

Jennifer Gibbs will be inducted as an ICA Fellow at the 2023 International Communication Association Conference in Toronto. Fellow status in the International Communication Association is primarily a recognition of distinguished scholarly contributions to the broad field of communication.

Dan Lane is a recipient of the 2022-2023 Margaret T. Getman Service to Students Award. The annual Margaret T. Getman Service to Students Award recognizes university staff, faculty, and administrators who have demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the overall growth and development of students; who consistently strive for excellence in their support of students; and who have a commitment to the improvement of the quality of student life.

Ronald E. Rice was awarded a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS in Bochum, Germany; www.cais-research.de), from April 1 to June 30, 2024. He will continue work on the project, Extending and Applying the Media Mastery Typology: Structured Literature Review and Implications for Research.

Cynthia Stohl will receive the Steven Chaffee Career Achievement Award at the 2023 International Communication Association Conference in Toronto. The award honors a scholar (or small group of collaborating scholars) for a sustained contribution to theoretical development or empirical research related to communication studies over an extended period. The selection committee favors research that is innovative, asks conceptually rich questions, and elaborates new theoretical possibilities and/or compelling directions for empirical investigation. The body of work should comprise multiple publications and should have inspired second-generation work among a large number of other scholars. Rather than recognizing publication productivity or direct involvement in ICA, the award is designed to acknowledge the long term significance for communication studies of the recipient's scholarship. Most nominees are members of the discipline and belong to ICA, but other scholars are eligible, regardless of current membership or department affiliation. The winner has the option to present their research at the following year's ICA conference.

Joe Walther will receive the Fredrick Williams Prize by the Communication and Technology Division at the 2023 International Communication Association Conference in Toronto. The award recognizes the major contributions and cumulative achievements of a senior scholar who has advanced the study and the field of communication and technology.

Jennifer Kam received the 2022 Promoting Equity and Inclusivity Award from the Health Communication Division at the National Communication Association Conference in New Orleans. This award recognizes a division member who has clearly demonstrated excellence in promoting equity and inclusion in health communication.