Awards, Grants, Honors, Recognition

• Teaching Innovation Grant, SUNY Cortland Faculty Development Center: Spring 2023

The aim of these grants are to encourage the development and sharing of new instructional strategies among faculty. Proposals may be submitted for projects that focus on any type of course enhancement in an applicant's area of specialization.

The IDEALized public speaking curriculum: Inclusion, diversity, equity, access & learning

• A Top Paper in Political Communication, Eastern Communication Association: 2023 (1st place)

“Wake up, sheeple!” Sheeple aren’t real: Cartooning conspiracies in a theater of the absurd - Netflix’s Inside Job

• Lucy Shelton Caswell Research Award, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum: 2023 (with Daniel Yezbick, PhD)

The award is named for Professor Emerita Lucy Shelton Caswell, the founding curator of BICLM, and provides $2500 to support researchers who need to travel to Columbus, Ohio to use the BICLM collections materials on site.

• A Top Paper in Political Communication, Eastern Communication Association: 2022 (2nd place)

The Statue of Trumpery: Ironic metaphor and the visual ideograph

• Wilson Scholar, John P.  Wilson Fellowship of the New York State Communication Association: 2021

žThe Wilson Scholar Committee may, each year, award the Wilson Fellowship to a member of NYSCA who has established an exemplary record of scholarship and service to the Association. The fellowship carries the prize of life membership in the Association. To be considered for the award, nominees must: Be members of NYSCA, have contributed a significant body of research, have a record of service to NYSCA.

• Nomination (Politics in the Gutters) - 2022 Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies

Honoring the memory of USC professor Katherine Singer Kovács, this award is given to an outstanding book published in the field of cinema and media studies. Books should be original works that significantly advance scholarship and thinking in the field either by opening up new lines of inquiry or by consolidating existing ones at a high level of accomplishment.

• Past Officers’ Award, Eastern Communication Association: 2020

Presented annually by the past officers of ECA to an outstanding ECA member who has not been a past ECA officer, who is a current member of ECA, 10-15 years beyond the doctorate, and who has contributed a significant body of research to the communication discipline and possesses a significant record of continuing service to ECA.

• Distinguished Research Fellow, Eastern Communication Association: 2020

Recognition of distinguished research in the field of communication to a living member of ECA with a minimum of ten consecutive years membership prior to nomination, who has a record of active and continuous service to ECA as manifested by such activities as an association officer, chairing an interest group, editing an ECA journal, etc. May be awarded annually in recognition of distinguished research. No more than 1% of the membership can be given this award in any given year.

• A Top Paper in Political Communication, Eastern Communication Association: 2020 (1st place)

The fall of the towers and the rise of political comics journalism

• A Top Paper in Political Communication, Eastern Communication Association: 2019 (2nd place)

Hey, voters! Comics!: Campaign comics, election specials and graphic biographies

• Outstanding Humanities Alumni Achievement Award, Finger Lakes Community College: 19 May 2017

Awarded for the first time in 2013, the Humanities department created the award to recognize a graduate who has distinguished him or herself professionally.

• SUNY Potsdam President’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities: 18 May 2017

A campus-level honor for distinguished service and achievement, recognizing investigation or creation which has enlarged the store of human knowledge, or has expanded the potential of human creativity. Significant and positive impact on the students of the College.

• Phi Kappa Phi, SUNY Potsdam: 18 Mar. 2017

Faculty who achieve scholarly distinction are eligible by invitation to the nation’s oldest and most selective multidisciplinary collegiate honor society.

• SUNY Potsdam Honors Course Funding: Fall 2016

• SUNY Potsdam Research and Creative Endeavors Program 2016-2017: Fall 2016

Designed to provide seed money to pursue research and attract external funding for their work. The maximum award per project is $1,000.Preference given to projects that have the potential to encourage new faculty, women and minorities, support scholarly endeavors across the disciplines, and to attract external resources.

• Ten Years of Service, SUNY Potsdam: May 2016

• A Top Paper in Political Communication, Eastern Communication Association: 2016 (1st place)

Four-color politics: Ideology and the presidency in DC’s Prez 1973-2015

• Sabbatical leave (half-year) approved: 1 Sep. 2014 – 31 Dec. 2014

Sabbatical leaves shall be granted for planned travel, study, formal education, research, writing or other experience of professional value.

“Words cannot convey”: War letters as epistolic genre and key civil-military communication

• žNational Endowment of the Humanities Summer Seminar on Law & Religion: participant/grant recipient: Jul. 2010

• Nomination - Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student (SUNY Albany), Instructional & Developmental Division of the International Communication Association: 2005

• Phi Theta Kappa, Finger Lakes Community College: 1998