Yesterday I left you with a cliffhanger: two of our Communication Studies students presented a paper at the Western States Communication Association conference. Who are they are what was their paper about? Read on to find out!
Seniors Danny Sherman and Renee Gonzales gave a presentation entitled “Cultivating Community: Using New Media to Enhance Neighborhood Organizing” at the WSCA conference. Their project grew out of work they did with Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF) as part of Professor DeLaure’s Rhetoric of Social Movements course last fall. Danny and Renee discussed their service learning experience helping to organize a tree planting in the Central Richmond that took place on February 12. They concluded that “old-fashioned” communication media like email and word-of-mouth were ultimately more effective for this particular kind of community organizing, and that Facebook would likely be a promising social medium for FUF to explore in the future.
Seniors Renee Gonzales and Danny Sherman at the WSCA conference
Impressively, Danny and Renee presented their paper at the “regular” WSCA conference. There is an Undergraduate Scholars conference at WSCA for undergraduate students to participate in, but Danny and Renee decided to skip that and go straight to the big leagues! Congratulations!
A "Friends of the Urban Forest" truck
You can check out the following links to learn more about Friends of the Urban Forest: http://www.fuf.net/ or http://www.facebook.com/FriendsOfTheUrbanForest.
Nice job! Hope the presentation went well and great job representing USF!