Communication Studies Research Colloquium

The 2023 Communication Studies Research Colloquium took place on the Bloomsburg campus on April 18. 

The Research Colloquium is an annual event hosted by the department’s Xi Omega, Lambda Pi Eta (LPH) chapter. LPH is the National Communication Honor Society for Communication Studies students. The chapter invites students to submit an individual or group research paper that they wrote for a Communication Studies course within the past year. This year, the event was open to any student from across the three Commonwealth University campuses. The research contest attracted several paper submissions, with the papers averaging approximately sixteen pages in length and written from a variety of methodologies and ideological approaches. The submissions were reviewed anonymously by three department faculty members. Each reviewer ranked the submissions, and the authors of the top three ranked papers were selected to present their research at the Colloquium to an audience of students, faculty, and community members. 

The authors of this year’s selected papers included two of the department’s Communication Studies majors as well as a Health Communication minor. Kathryn Henriksen (Pottstown) from the Bloomsburg campus presented her research, which included a rhetorical analysis of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation speech. Kerri Hoover (Bellefonte) from the Lock Haven campus presented her results from an in-depth social media analysis, execution plan, and success report that she conducted as part of her internship experience.

Colin M. Cronen (Harrisburg) from the Bloomsburg campus was the recipient of the 2023 Howard Schreier Award for Outstanding Student Scholarship. Colin recently graduated with a degree in Audiology and minors in ASL and Health Communication. Colin's paper was a scoping review of the studies on the presence of undiagnosed hearing loss and its impact on clinical communication between older adults and healthcare providers, which was his final paper for the Health Communication course. Prior to presenting at the Research Colloquium, Colin's research was presented at the Eastern Communication Association's annual convention in Baltimore, Md., on April 1. In the fall, Colin will begin Nova Southeastern University’s Doctor of Audiology program in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.