2017 Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Outstanding Junior Scholar Award

Jessica Gall Myrick, an assistant professor for The Media School at Indiana University-Bloomington, is the winner of the 2016 Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Outstanding Woman Junior Scholar Award.

Kopenhaver is dean emeritus and professor at Florida International University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The award will be presented on Tuesday, Aug. 8, at the 2017 AEJMC Conference in Chicago. AEJMC, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, is a nonprofit organization for journalism and mass communication scholars, educators, students and professionals.

Myrick, who begins a new job in fall 2017 as a tenured associate professor at Penn State University, conducts interdisciplinary research that focuses on mediated messages and how they affect health, science and environmental communication. She has published 30 journal articles and a 2015 book on health communication. She also is part of a $470,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health. In 2016, she received one of four AEJMC Emerging Scholar awards, accompanied by a research grant.

“Dr. Myrick’s research is theory-driven, interdisciplinary in nature, and methodologically sophisticated,” wrote Walter Gantz, Indiana University chair of communication science, who nominated her for the award. “Her scholarship is relevant to media scholars, political scientists, psychologists and cognitive scientists, sociologists and epidemiologists. In addition, Dr. Myrick’s work has real world value for journalists, campaign planners, policy-makers and government agencies funding programs designed to stimulate positive social change.”

Myrick holds a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and an M.A. in journalism and B.A. in political science from Indiana University. She is a former journalist.

This is the fourth year for the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Outstanding Woman Junior Scholar Award. Kopenhaver, executive director of the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication at Florida International University, founded the award with cooperation from the AEJMC Commission on the Status of Women to honor a woman junior scholar who demonstrates outstanding research and great potential for future scholarship. The winner receives a $250 check and a certificate. The judges for this year’s competition were Maria Len-Ríos of the Grady College at the University of Georgia; Sheila Peuchaud of the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada-Reno; and Natalie Tindall of Lamar University.