In addition to being teachers, two SMU faculty members have been recognized for work in their fields outside of the classroom.
Dr. Bonnie Wheeler, associate professor of English and director of medieval studies, was elected president of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals in December. Advertising professor Dr. Alice Kendrick has also gained recognition for her work with the Research Innovation Award, presented to her by the Advertising Research Foundation.
Dr. Wheeler is enthusiastic about her position. The members of the CELJ are all editors of scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences. In fact, Dr. Wheeler serves as the editor of one scholarly journal, Arthuriana, and two book series, “The New Middle Ages” and “Arthurian and Courtly Cultures.”
As president of CELJ, Dr. Wheeler is determined to boost recognition of the role of the scholarly journal in our new e-world. Since many articles are being presented online, she hopes that she and other editors can “re-think new roles of the scholarly editor.”
As well as leading the CELJ, she has been invited to speak at the university of Rochester’s Robbins Lecture this spring. Her lecture, titled “Absorbing Rumors: Malory’s Sir Lancelot,” is her first keynote address at this University, although she has given several keynote addresses at other universities around the country this year. She mentioned that the Robbins Lecture is “a nice chance to talk to colleagues and students interested in my field.”
The Advertising Research Foundation has awarded SMU advertising professor Dr. Alice Kendrick with the Research Innovation Award for her work involving commercials and United States diplomacy. Her experiments analyzed the effectiveness of commercials that presented testimonials from Muslims in the United States.
The American government showed these commercials in predominantly Muslim countries to, according to Kendrick, “engender goodwill with the citizens.” While most people felt that such commercials were a ridiculous idea, she demonstrated, through methods of measuring ad effectiveness, that “the commercials resulted in more favorable attitudes.”
Kendrick’s book, “Advertising’s War on Terrorism: The Story of the U.S. State Department’s Shared Values Initiative,” co-authored with Jami Fullerton of Oklahoma State University, details their findings. Because this is a highly controversial topic, Kendrick explained, “we had our reservations as well.”
“But my big ‘aha’ moment was learning that foreign publics are much more interested in learning about the United States than cynical Americans think,” she said.
Although she could not attend the awards ceremony, Kendrick was able to accept her award through a webcam.
“It is very nice and gratifying to be recognized by a professional organization with such a great history of supporting research in advertising,” she said.
