Category Archives: Research

2 Internship Opportunities: WorldCom and CHOP

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Two exclusive internship opportunities for our Communication students are listed below! Check back each week for more!

1. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute is pleased to announce the 4th year of The CHOP Research Institute Summer Scholars Program (CRISSP).  CRISSP is a 10-week competitive summer internship program for undergraduate students interested in careers in the biomedical sciences.  The internship is designed to provide students with theoretical knowledge, practical training in academic research, and critical exposure to pediatric-focused career trajectories under the direct mentorship of CHOP faculty.  Full time immersion in a lab or research group allows interns to experience science and discovery first hand.

CRISSP offers opportunities in basic, clinical, behavioral, and translational research.  In addition to completing an independent research project, interns learn basic techniques and gain exposure to how research is conducted under the direction of CHOP faculty.  Interns present their independent research project at a commencement event open to the entire research community.  A stipend will be provided.  The program runs June 1 to August 7, 2015.  Additional information is available on our website: http://www.research.chop.edu/programs/crissp/.

Applications will open in November. Up to 25 students will be accepted.

Independent internship

2. WorldCom Public Relations GroupScreen Shot 2014-10-08 at 9.56.28 PM

 

 

Tell Your Story: Dr. Danna Young Speaks at Drexel University

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Dr. Danna Young, an Assistant Profesor at the Department of Communication, visited and spoke at Drexel University on Tuesday, May 6. Her talk, entitled “Satire, Citizenship, and the Strong Case of Irony,” was a part of the Drexel “Great Works Symposium.”

In her talk, Dr. Young specifically discussed satire and parody, focusing on Colbert’s SuperPAC and his coverage on the Citizen’s United decision. Dr. Young also referenced the recent drama of the Twitter “#CancelColbert” trend and how irony is a dangerous rhetorical device.

danna young drexel u

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‘Like’ The Department of Communication on Facebook

Celebrating 40 years as a Department.                                                                        Join the conversation with the hash-tag: #UDCOMM40

Cool Stuff Still Happening in UD COMM Dept in 2012

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It’s election time and UD’s Center for Political Communication (CPC) will host a late-night election watch party at the good ‘ole Trabant Center TONIGHT. Were you there for the 2008 Election Watch? Follow activities tonight through the Twitter hashtag #ElectionCentral. We had 200o students for the last national election and we think there will be a ton of free UD Creamery “Stars and Stripes” custom-made ice cream eaten by the huge crowd gathered to watch the numbers roll in.

Our own Dr. Jenny Lambe and Dr. Paul Brewer, both in the COMM Department and the CPC are quoted here discussing the university’s National Agenda poll.  It seems that since the Citizens United 2010 supreme court ruling, most Americans favor limited corporate money in our election process.

Think there’s something “funny” about elections? Well, Danna Young and Lindsay Hoffman, both assistant COMM professors recently shared their views about the impact of political humor in a high energy and thought-provoking 30-minute WVUD 91.3 FM radio interview.

Young and Hoffman had a lot of fun talking about a wide range of topics about the current campaign–and past campaigns–including the place of satirists like Stewart and Colbert, the importance of voters watching the debates and candidates’ speeches, twitter and other new media, and each campaign’s attempts  to win the “battle for truth.” Listen to the free WVUD audio podcast through iTunes ( it’s from the 10/25/12 episode) .

The Center for Political Communication has again hosted multiple Delaware election debates with great audience turn out from both students and the Delaware community.

We’re very proud of Dr. Juliette Dee, who has the lead piece in the latest issue of Communication Currents.  The issue is focused in honor of Free Speech Week and her article summarizes the Supreme Court’s rulings regarding freedom of expression last term.

 

The COMM Fab Four

Thanks to Dr. Nancy Signorielli , WVUD’s own Steve Kramark, COMM MA ’12, and current COMM graduate students Chris Chris Volker COMM ’12 and Colin Kearney for representing our department at the golf fundraiser for the Megan Ashley Perry scholarship fund!  Looking sharp!

 

 

Stanford University’s Baba Shiv with UD COMM honor student Shantel Campbell.

One of our current undergraduate students, Shantel Campbell, COMM ’13, presented her academic research on the affect of scarcity of time and resources on buyer behavior at the Leadership Alliance National Symposium (LANS) at the Hartford Marriott Downtown in Hartford, Conn., earlier this year.

 

Campbell, majoring in mass communication with a minor in advertising,  is involved in the prestigious UD Honors Program. Very few students nation wide qualify to conduct research at the undergraduate level. Bravo!

 

We’re Busy with Politics, PR and “Party-Crazy” Students

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The Communication Department faculty continue to work at a frenetic pace. It’s hard to track down all that happens around here, but check out the latest updates:

  • Dr. Lindsay Hoffman and Ralph Begleiter, both COMM faculty and part of UD’s new Center for Political Communication, put their talents to work investigating hot-topics and hot tempers about politics.  It’s part of a new public opinion poll studying how technology has changed people’s interactions with government and politicians.
  • Some alumni may remember taking a news documentary course and late night hours editing and re-editing.  Dr. Lydia Timmins, in her second year at UD, now sheppards students through the course. Her students’ work caught the attention of WHYY-TV this week because of their innovative investigation into student “apathy”.

 

  • Public Relations professor Carolyn White Bartoo ended up at her own “summer internship” with one of the largest PR agencies in the world, Ketchum (Chicago office). Ketchum’s top leadership hosted her as part of a national fellowship program for university faculty to get “back in the trenches” for two weeks and get up to speed with how today’s practicioners work with social media, online research, and today’s economic realities. Check out her blog or tweets @CaroBar2 for young PR professonals.

 

 

UD-COMM’s own Dr. Scott Caplan Hits a “Home Run” Looking into Video Gamers

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Dr. Scott Caplan

In academia, it’s all about the numbers. And in this case, Dr. Scott Caplan moved into the top ranks of his field recently when his super-popular scholarly article on stereotypes surrounding  people who play video games, or “gamers”, became the most used article on this topic in the country.

This is like winning the World Series and reaching the top level of Super Mario Brothers at the once  . . . if you’re a professor.

Caplan’s article is the top-cited article for 2010 of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.  Originally published in 2008, it’s  been cited 12 times in 2010 and has been cited 22 times to date.

Caplan coauthored the article with Dmitri Williams, of the University of Southern California, and
Nick Yee, of the Palo Alto Research Center. Their abstract follows:

“Online games have exploded in popularity, but for many researchers access to players has
been difficult. The study reported here is the first to collect a combination of survey and
behavioral data with the cooperation of a major virtual world operator. In the current study,
7,000 players of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) EverQuest 2 were surveyed
about their offline characteristics, their motivations and their physical and mental health.”

Just in Time for the World Series: UD Communication Professor Puts Pitching (and the rest of baseball) in its Place

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Dr. Charlie Pavitt, decoding baseball

Dr. Charles Pavitt uses statistical analysis to debunk the old adage “Pitching is 75% of the Game”

Dr. Charles (Charlie) Pavitt is known around the Communication Department (COMM) at the University of Delaware as a “stats guy” having taught the research methods course all undergraduate COMM majors must take to get into the major, COMM 301 (Introduction to Communication Research Methods), for more than a decade.  Recently, Pavitt was up to his old trick of finding interesting ways to view statistical problems – this time it took the form of baseball analysis. 

The on-line only Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, Volume 7, Number 4 will feature Pavitt’s article: An Estimate of How Hitting, Pitching, Fielding, and Base-stealing Impact Team Winning Percentages in Baseball.  With this, Pavitt manages to define the perfect “formula” for MLB teams to use to build the ultimate winning team. Turns out, it’s NOT all about pitching.

“There’s an old adage about baseball that ‘pitching is 75% of the game’.  But actually it’s only about 25% of the game, according to my study,” says Pavitt, with a wry grin.

Pavitt wanted to look past all the smoke and mirrors that distracts analysts, and dig deep into the statistics to clarify what makes the strongest teams win. To do that, he crunched hitting, pitching, fielding and base-stealing records for every MLB team over a 48-year period from 1951 through 1998 with a method no other researcher has yet to use in this area. In statistical parlance he used a conceptual decomposition of offense and defense into its component parts and then analyzed recombinations of the parts in intuitively meaningful ways.

 

In the end, he found something baseball researchers know but many MLB team don’t: the ability to steal bases is just not that important to the overall win-record of a professional baseball team. What is? Pavitt found that hitting accounts for more than 45% of teams’ winning records, fielding for 25% and pitching for 25%

 

So as the boys of summer gear up for the World Series games in the next few weeks, perhaps their managers will look to Dr. Charlie Pavitt for a few tips on fielding a future baseball dynasty.  Seems like he’s got the secret formulation.