Department of Communication Welcomes New Faculty and Staff

UARK - New Faculty Orientation Team

Branton, Elkhalid and Lee at the New Faculty Orientation.

The Department of Communication would like to share our excitement in welcoming and celebrating 10 new additions to our team. 

We are elated to announce five new tenure track faculty members:

Terrell Jake Dionne and Meredith Neville-Shepard have served the Department of Communication in their previous roles. Both have accepted promotions to serve as assistant professors in their new roles. 

• Dionne holds a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Colorado Boulder. He specializes in environmental communication and rhetorical studies. His research provides insight into how organizations strategically remember and forget the past, painting a picture of diverse stakeholders communicating about environmental and social justice. He teaches classes on these subjects in the contexts of activism, business, law, policy and everyday life. He also serves as the faculty adviser for the Alpha chapter of Lambda Pi Eta. 
• Neville-Shepard also serves as the development director for the Department of Communication. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. She initially joined the faculty at the U of A in 2016 with an appointment of teaching assistant professor and was promoted to teaching associate professor in 2022. She is a rhetorical scholar whose research focuses on political culture, feminism and argumentation. Her peer-reviewed journal articles have appeared in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, American Behavioral Scientist, Feminist Media Studies and Women's Studies in Communication.

Scotti Branton, Amnee Elkhalid and Joomi Lee are joining us this semester for the first time and will serve as assistant professors.

• Branton studies organizational communication and organizational practices. Branton earned his PhD. from the University of Missouri-Columbia and previously served as an assistant professor at Auburn University. Specifically, Branton studies branding, DEI and affect in the workplace. Branton's work spans a variety of organizational contexts such as gay bars, fin-tech companies, veterinary medicine and workforce intermediaries. His research has appeared in Management Communication Quarterly, Journal of Public Relations Research and the International Review of Qualitative Research. Branton teaches courses in organizational advocacy, DEI and communication, organizational communication, emotion in the workplace and intercultural communication. Prior to his career in academia, Branton worked as a social worker and child welfare advocate in the state of Florida.
• Elkhalid joins us from the University of Missouri, where she earned her Ph.D. and served as the assistant director of undergraduate studies. Elkhalid researches identity, diversity and adversity, with a specific interest in how messages influence identity development, identity management and relationships. Her areas of interest include interfaith, intercultural, immigrant and refugee identities and relationships. She is currently focusing on research that includes intergenerational communication and adverse experiences in refugee and immigrant families and relationships, as well as interfaith families and religious identification. 
• Lee earned her Ph.D. in communication from Michigan State University after receiving her M.A. in telecommunications from Indiana University. Most recently, she served as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Georgia's Center for Advanced Computer-Human Ecosystems. Lee's research is situated at the intersection of media psychology and human-computer interaction. Specifically, her work emphasizes motivation, cognition and behavioral changes through emerging media use, such as virtual and extended reality, video games and artificial intelligence. This academic year, Lee will be teaching courses on computer-mediated communication as well as interactive and immersive media.

The Department of Communication is happy to announce the addition of four new instructors to our department, including Abigail Duffel, Shawn Evans, Mallory Gates and Gabrielle Willingham.

We would like extend a warm welcome to Sarah Chen, who is joining our office staff as an administrative specialist III, specializing in procurement and travel arrangements. Chen joined us over the summer and is looking forward to helping our departement thrive as we enter the fall semester.