Rachel Dubrofsky and Ambar Basu have been promoted to Asssociate Professors and granted tenure at USF.  Congratulations Ambar and Rachel!

Carolyn Ellis spent a week (May 19-26, 2013) with Holocaust Warsaw Ghetto survivor, Jerry Rawicki, in Warsaw, Poland. They returned to Jerry’s hometown of Plock;  visited museums, monuments, and the Ghetto Wall in Warsaw; and traveled to Treblinka to pay respects to Jerry’s family who died there.  Carolyn and Jerry have co-authored four articles together. While in Poland, they made a film and shot additional footage that they hope to make into a documentary about Jerry’s experiences during the Holocaust and his experiences now remembering.

Sheila Gobes-Ryan has received the Michael Brill Grant in Urban Communication and Environmental Design, sponsored by the Urban Communication Foundation (UCF) and the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA).This program supports new and  innovative research projects that bridge the fields of communication and environmental design. Congratulations Sheila.

Emily Ryalls has accepted a tenure track position with Mississippi State University. Her tenure home will be the Communication Department, and she will also teach in the Gender Studies program. The Communication Department is in the process of building an MA program in media studies.  Congratulations Emily.

Ken Cissna has won the prestigious USF Distinguished Service Award. This award is one of the university’s highest honors given in recognition of many years of outstanding service to USF. The award is conferred by USF on faculty who have distinguished themselves through services they have provided without personal gain on behalf of the University, and that have contributed significantly to the welfare of their profession, USF, or the community. Congratulations Ken.

Robin Boylorn won the inaugural H.L. "Bud" Goodall and Nicholas Lee Trujillo "It's A Way of Life" Award in Narrative Ethnography for her book Sweetwater:  Black Women and Narratives of Resilience.

The award is co-sponsored by the Ethnography Division of the National Communication Association and the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry and was initiated to honor the life work of Goodall and Trujillo.  Sandra Goodall, Bud's wife, presented the award at the 9th ICQI on May 17, 2013.

Tony Adams's book, Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same-Sex Attraction, has been selected as the winner of the first annual NCA GLBTQ Division and Caucus Book of the Year Award. Congratulations Tony!

Humor Doesn't Pause with Improv@USF & PDC

During the summer months Improv@USF will be playing university orientation events for incoming Freshman, working on their own recruitment. The executive officers will be working hard to restructure meetings and plan more shows on and off campus to accommodate for their growing numbers and visibility on campus. Also, the core members of Improv@USF will be playing all over the Tampa Bay area every week in the summer, including Tampa Pitcher Show, Jobsite Theater and The Roosevelt 2.0 with Post Dinner Conversation, a local improv company that originated in 2012 under the direction of Kari Goetz as she was working on her MA in Communication. PDC's schedule, video, and more is available online at www.postdinnerconvo.com.
In the fall, Improv@USF will be taking the campus by storm with more events, more shows, and more guerrilla theater! They will be playing monthly shows with the USF Stand Up club at Beef O'Brady's on campus and opening for Post Dinner Conversation's Bulls Nite Out event in the MSC ballroom. Anyone who wants to play is welcome join in the mayhem! Contact the group via their Facebook page at facebook/improvatusf or follow along at www.improvatusf.com.

You can also click here to read more about Improv@USF and Post Dinner Conversation in an article published by the USF Oracle.