Musa Malik, Sungbin Youk, and Rene Weber have received a Top Paper Award from the Communication Science and Biology division of the International Communication Association (for the annual conference in June in Australia) for their paper, entitled "Beyond the Screen: Looking for Moral Understanding in User Comments on YouTube Short Films."
The UCSB Comm Alumni Council organizes a monthly Virtual Careers session to benefit current students and recent grads to assist them in their career search. You will hear directly from a former comm student about how they got their first job and navigated other opportunities to achieve their current, dream job. After a short presentation by the comm alum speaker, we will open it up to a Q&A with all attendees.
Speaker: Kelly Mergenthaler (Sterk), Head of Product Marketing, Scope3.
Topic: Marketing
Date: Thursday February 15, 6-6:45 pm.
A link for free registration is available at https://www.comm.ucsb.edu/alumni/involvement/resources. Videos of all sessions are available there too.
Kelly Mergenthaler (Sterk) is the Head of Product Marketing for Scope3, a data company on a mission to decarbonize media and advertising. As the primary product marketer defining a new category, Kelly applies her digital advertising expertise and leans on her passion for protecting the environment to inspire advertising companies to reduce their emissions. Kelly was the first marketing hire at the two year old start up that now works with 100+ of the world’s largest brands and advertisers. In her previous role, Kelly traveled across 46 markets to train advertisers on the advantage of harnessing AI to achieve their business objectives. Whether it be emissions models or machine learning models, Kelly translates technical products into digestible, understandable concepts and produces resources for internal and external education. Kelly holds a dual BA from University of California Santa Barbara in Communication and in Environmental Studies. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-sterk-a978445b
The UCSB Comm Alumni Council organizes a monthly Virtual Careers session to benefit current students and recent grads to assist them in their career search. You will hear directly from a former comm student about how they got their first job and navigated other opportunities to achieve their current, dream job. After a short presentation by the comm alum speaker, we will open it up to a Q&A with all attendees.
Speaker: Laura Roenick, United Talent Agency
Topic: Careers in Entertainment
Date: January 17, 6- 6:45 pm.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-roenick-b5114a7/
A link for free registration is available at https://www.comm.ucsb.edu/alumni/involvement/resources. Videos of all sessions are available there too.
Chris Otmar and Andy Merolla received the top overall paper award in the Health Communication Division of the 2023 Western States Communication Association Convention. The paper is titled: "Social Determinants of Message Exposure and Health Anxiety among Young Sexual Minority Men in the United States during the 2022 Mpox Outbreak".
We continue the UCSB Communication Alumni Council Virtual Career Series via Zoom, featuring UCSB Communication Alumni. Sessions continue the 1st or 2nd Wednesday of most months during the academic year. Join us December 13, 2023(6-6:45 pm) for Jordan Gomez, First Vice President, Kidder Mathews. Topic: Investment Sales.
Link to free registration and Zoom link available here: https://www.comm.ucsb.edu/alumni/involvement/resources
Bedlam has a background in engineering, receiving their B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and working in semiconductor manufacturing research at IBM before coming to UCSB to study Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Fall of 2020. While studying protein engineering in the Theogarajan lab, they became enmeshed in graduate student community, organizing and activism, helping them realize their passion for community organizing. Bedlam is so excited to be switching into the Communication Department, and looks forward to researching the role played by narratives and professional identities in the 2022 UAW Academic Worker Strike. In their free time, Bedlam enjoys rock climbing, running, pottery, gardening and baking teeny little cupcakes.
B.S. 2018, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Chemical Engineering
November 6, 2023 (6-6:45pm): Genelle Heim will discuss Marketing & Strategy. She is Senior Director of Cybersecurity Communications, Phishing, and Training at a global healthcare company. She is also the Founder of Grayson Hayden Group, a strategic communications agency. With extensive experience in high-tech marketing and communications, she has held key roles at Xilinx, Cisco, VMware, and Cadence. In 2014 she founded Curchew, a social media start-up whose clients included Genentech, Adobe, and Plantronics. Genelle brings a global perspective to the art of communication, having lived in Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and India. A seasoned public speaker, she has presented at industry events and corporate seminars as well as been a guest lecturer at Stanford, Harvard, and other universities. She holds an MPA from Harvard University and a BA in Communication and in Japanese from UC Santa Barbara. Genelle is looking forward to deepening her connection with the students, staff, and alumni of UCSB through the Communication Alumni Council. When she is not working she can be found with her husband and two sons in their hometown of Santa Cruz, CA where she enjoys enjoys hiking, swimming, and mountain biking.
Click here (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/744741691447?aff=oddtdtcreator) for free registration and Zoom link for the Nov 8 Virtual Career Session.
October 24, 2023 (6-6:45 pm): Stacy Rackusin, Deputy Director of Development, Jewish Family & Children's Services. Topic: Development. Stacy Rackusin, a fourth-generation San Franciscan, is the Deputy Director of Development at Jewish Family and Children’s Services of San Francisco, The Peninsula, Marin, and Sonoma Counties (JFCS). Stacy has over 20 years of non-profit fundraising experience, including developing better practices for data mining and analysis for increased fundraising success, community engagement, relationship-building, and nonprofit management. Recent prior roles include Director of Development at The Contemporary Jewish Museum and Membership/Annual Giving Manager at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Stacy majored at UCSB in Communication with a minor in Professional Writing.
Click here (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ucsb-comm-alumni-virtual-career-series-tickets-737147466917?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl) for free registration and Zoom link for the Oct 24 Virtual Career Session.
Howie and Jane Giles and former UCSB grads (Jessica Gasiorek and Sharde Davis) win 2023 Communication and Aging Outstanding Book Award from the National Communication Association’s CAD Division for their book: Giles, H., Gasiorek, J., Davis, S., & Giles, J. (2022). Communication for successful aging: Empowering individuals across the lifespan. Routledge. The committee commented that the book “is nicely grounded in leading-edge theory and reflective of a productive line of research by the authors and other scholars,” and particularly appreciated that it “focuses squarely on communicative aspects of aging.”
Authors Yifeng Wang (University of Oklahoma), Ceciley (Xinyi) Zhang (UC Santa Barbara), and Yuwei Zhong (UC Davis) won the top student paper award from the Group Communication Division for the 2023 National Communication Association, for “Blaming Undocumented Immigrants in Crises: Revisiting Effects of Death and Economic Threats through Holistic Thinking Since COVID-19.”