Rutgers School of Communication and Information

The School of Communication and Information (SC&I) is a professional school within the New Brunswick Campus of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The school was created in 1982 as a result of a merger between the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, the School of Communication Studies, and the Livingston Department of Urban Journalism. The school offers 3 undergraduate majors in Communication, Information Technology and Informatics, and Journalism and Media Studies, two undergraduate minors, in Digital Communication, Information, and Media and, beginning January 2015, one in Gender and Media, as well as a Master of Communication and Information Studies, a Master of Library and Information Science, and an interdisciplinary PhD program in Communication, Information and Library Studies. SC&I also has students pursuing nondegree certificates through its Professional Development Studies program. The school has about 2,500 students at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels, and about 60 full-time faculty. Part-time faculty with professional experience make an important contribution to the classroom.

Among the distinguished faculty of the school are Fulbright Fellows, Woodrow Wilson Fellows, and Annenberg Scholars; Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Council of Learned Societies; recipients of the Hiet Prize in the Humanities and awards from the Academy of Management, American Society for Information Science, Association of Computing Machinery, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science, and the National Communication Association; and recipients of Rutgers University awards for teaching, research, and service, among other honors.

The graduate program in library and information science has been ranked number 6 in the nation, with the specialization in school library media ranked 2nd and several other specializations in the top ten, by U.S. News & World Report.

History

Although SC&I was established in 1982, the roots of the academic programs housed at the school date back to the 1920s.

1926 Undergraduate program in Journalism established at Rutgers College

1927 Undergraduate program in librarianship established at the New Jersey College for Women, later Douglass College. This became defunct two decades later.

1953 Graduate School of Library Service (GSLS) opens its doors to its first class of master’s students.

1971 Undergraduate major in Communication established

1978 Name of the GSLS changes to Graduate School of Library and Information Studies

1982 School of Communication, Information and Library Studies is established. At the time of its inception, the school offered two undergraduate majors (Communication, Journalism and Mass Media), a master's degree in Library Service, and established an interdisciplinary doctoral program

1983 Names of the departments are denoted as Department of Communication, Department of Journalism and Mass Media, and Department of Library and Information Studies

1987 Master of Communication and Information Studies established

2001 Undergraduate major in Information Technology and Informatics begins accepting students

2005 Online Master of Library and Information Science program admits its first students

2009 Name changed from School of Communication, Information and Library Studies to School of Communication and Information.

Academic Departments

Communication

Students and faculty in the Department of Communication study the nature and effects of communication on individuals, social groups, and society, including the ways in which communication is practiced in everyday life and the choices about communication that affect individuals and their situation. This program was founded as an undergraduate program in 1971.

Organizational communication, mediated communication, language and social interaction, and interpersonal communication are primary areas of faculty research with change, collaboration, culture, health, gender, globalization, identity, leadership, persuasion, policy, and relationship development prominent problem-centered research foci across areas.

Department Chair

• Laurie Lewis

Journalism and Media Studies

The Department of Journalism and Media Studies is concerned with the relationships among media texts, institutions, and audiences, especially in the way that media and society affect each other politically, culturally, and socially. This includes study of both the “traditional” mass media and newer electronic technologies and telecommunications. The Journalism and Media Studies program was founded in 1926.

Research examines media content and effects; audience reception and interpretive processes; the emergence of audiences understood in terms of race, age, gender, class, and politics; the sociology and production of culture; communication law, regulation, and policy; and the media’s roles in political and international communication and in educational systems.

Department Chair

• Jack Bratich

Library and Information Science

The Department of Library and Information Science focuses on the role of information in personal, social, institutional, national, and international contexts. Research of information-seeking activity, information retrieval systems, and information structures are core interests. These research interests involve considerations of design, management, and evaluation of information systems and services along with the development and assessment of tools responsive to the information needs of users. Digital libraries, school libraries and youth services, knowledge management, and information personalization are areas of notable emphasis within the department. The program was founded in 1927.

Department Chair

• Ross J. Todd

Centers and Institutes

Center for Communication and Health Issues

CHI is a consortium of educators, counselors and students with a mission to conduct research on communication and health issues affecting college students and to design, implement and evaluate campus and community-based education, intervention and prevention programs. It was founded in 1997 by Communication Professors Linda C. Lederman and Lea P. Stewart, Health educators Richard Powell and Fern Goodhart, and substance abuse counselor Lisa Laitman, as an ongoing collaboration.

Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL)

The Center for International Scholarship (CISSL) dedicated to research, scholarship, education and consultancy for school library professionals. It focuses on how learning in an information age school is enabled and demonstrated by school library programs, and how inquiry-based learning and teaching processes can contribute to educational success and workplace readiness for learners. CISSL’s Director is Professor Carol Kuhlthau and Professor Ross Todd is Director of Research.

Center for Organizational Development and Leadership (ODL)

The Center for Organizational Development and Leadership serves as a resource to the university community in support of efforts to create a more service-oriented culture. Emphasis is placed on relationship building and "teaching in all we do" - inside and outside of the classroom.Education and instruction, consultation and facilitation, and research and development in organizational leadership are core focal areas.

Knowledge Institute

The Knowledge Institute is dedicated to primary and applied research to advance the understanding of knowledge management in the areas of knowledge generation, knowledge sharing, knowledge use, and the management of knowledge objects. The study of knowledge creation and sharing is an interdisciplinary endeavor that involves communication and information skills and tools and is practiced by professionals in communication, information, library science and media.

LAIR Laboratory

The Rutgers LAIR is a laboratory for advanced information research which is home to a number of research projects directed by members of the Library and Information Science Faculty at Rutgers. The projects range over many areas, but are all broadly related to the issues of digitally storing, organizing and retrieving information, in order to serve diverse communities of users. The LAIR is also home to the Alexandria Project Laboratory (APLab), which from time to time conducts studies of library economics. Another resident activity is the Rutgers Distributed Laboratory for Digital Libraries (RDLDL), the predecessor to the LAIR. LAIR is active in sponsoring and organizing workshops on a variety of activities.

NetSCI Lab

The NetSCI lab is dedicated to producing cutting edge networks research, advancing theories of social networks, methods for network analysis, and the practical application of networks research. Researchers in the lab are focused on the study of organizations and communities across multiple levels of interaction, connecting theory to practice, and informing the design of networks in everyday life.

SALTS Lab - Laboratory for the Study of Applied Language Technology and Society

SALTS, the Laboratory for the Study of Applied Language Technology and Society at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University, brings together researchers interested in developing and/or using next-generation natural language processing technology that supports communication across cultural and social boundaries in areas such as digital libraries, education, public health, humanities, linguistics and communication.

Student organizations

• African American Culture and Communication Association
• Association for Information Science and Technology
• Association of Black Journalists
• Association for Women in Communications
• Doctoral Student Association
• Gamma Nu Eta (Information Technology Honor Society)
• Information Technology and Informatics Council
• International Association of Business Communicators
• Kappa Tau Alpha (Journalism and Media Studies Honor Society)
• Lambda Pi Eta (Communication Honor Society)
• Library and Information Science Student Association (American Library Association Student Chapter)
• Master of Communication and Information Graduate Student Association
• Public Relations Student Society of America
• Rutgers Association of School Librarians
• Rutgers University Debate Union
• Society of Professional Journalists
• Special Libraries Association
• Student College, Academic, and Research Library Association
• Student Organization for Unique and Rare Collections Everywhere

Core Faculty Members

Communication

• Mark Aakhus (Social Interaction, Organizational & Mediated Communication)
• Galina Bolden (Language & Social Interaction)
• Marya L. Doerfel (Organizational Communication, Social Networks)
• Meara Faw (Interpersonal Communication, Health Communication)
• Bernadette Gailliard (Organizational Communication)
• Jennifer Gibbs (Organizational Communication, Mediated Communication)
• Kathryn Greene (Health Communication)
• Keith Hampton (Social Interaction, Information and Communication Technologies)
• Brian Householder
• Vikki Katz (Immigrant and Family Communication)
• Jeff Lane (Urban Ethnography, Mediate Communication and Communities)
• Laurie Lewis (Organizational Communication)
• Nikolaos Linardopoulos (Communication Education, Public Speaking)
• Jenny Mandelbaum (Social Interaction, Conversational Analysis, Relationships,Identity, Interpersonal Communication)
• Lisa Mikesell (Social Interaction, Health Communication)
• Hartmut Mokros (Social Interaction, Identity, Microanalysis, Childhood Mental Health)
• Brent Ruben (Organizational Communication)
• Craig Scott (Organizational Communication, Communication Technologies, Anonymous Communication)
• Lea P. Stewart (Health Communication, Communication and Gender, Communication Ethics)
• Jennifer Theiss (Interpersonal Communication, Relationship Development)
• Matthew Weber (Organizational Communication, Communication Technology)
• Itzhak Yanovitzky(Health Communication)

Journalism and Media Studies

• Melissa Aronczyk (Promotional Culture, Political and Cultural Interpretations of Globalization)
• Jack Bratich (Critical Cultural Studies, Social Political Theory, Popular Culture)
• Christina Dunbar-Hester (Technology and Culture, Users and Technical Cultures, Media Activism, Gender, Ethnography)
• Lauren Feldman (Media and Politics, Political Communication, Intersection of Entertainment and Politics)
• David Greenberg (U.S Political and Media History, Media and Politics)
• Susan Keith (Evolution of Journalistic Practice, Media Law and Ethics, Visual Journalism)
• Deepa Kumar (Class, Gender, Race and Media, Middle East, War and Media, Social Movements)
• Regina Marchi (Race, Class, Gender and Media, Social Movements & Media, Community-based Media, Latino Media and Pop Culture)
• Steven Miller (Undergraduate Studies, Internships)
• Philip Napoli (Media Institutions, Media Policy, Audience Measurement)
• John V. Pavlik (New Media, Journalism and Society)
• Aram Sinnreich (Critical Information Studies, Musical Culture, Digital Culture, Communication Law and Policy, Digital Journalism)
• Khadijah White (Race, Gender, and Politics in the Media)
• Todd Wolfson (New Media and Social Movements, Cyber Ethnography, Poverty and Class Formation)

Library and Information Science

• Marc Aronson (Literature for Young Readers, History of the Book, Fiction and Nonfiction)
• Nicholas Belkin (Information Science)
• Kay Cassell (Reference and Information Science)
• Kaitlin L. Costello (Health Information Behavior, Social Media)
• Marija Dalbello (Social History of Knowledge, Documents, Collections)
• Ingrid Erickson
• Paul Kantor (Information and Computer Science and Operations Research)
• Michael Lesk (Information Science)
• Claire R. Mclnerney (Information Science, Information and Communication Technology, Social Informatics)
• Daniel O. O'Connor (Information Science)
• Lilia Pavlovsky (Information Science, Social Computing, Distance Learning)
• Marie L. Radford (Interpersonal/Small Group Communication)
• Rebecca Reynolds (Computer-supported Collaborative Learning, New Media, Information and Digital Literacies, Information Seeking)
• Joe Sanchez (Virtual Worlds, Social Informatics)
• Chirag Shah (Information Seeking, Social Media)
• Vivek Singh
• Anselm Spoerri (Information Science)
• Sharon Stoerger (Computer-Mediated Communication, Social Media, Instructional Technology)
• Ross J Todd (Information Science)
• Joyce Valenza (Children and Learning, Social and New Media)
• Nina Wacholder (Natural Language Processing, Information Access, Organizing Information, Information Systems)
• Xiaomu Zhou (Health Informatics, Human-Computer Interaction)

External links

• SC&I homepage
• http://www.comminfo.rutgers.edu/research/centers-and-institutes.html