NDSU Department of Communication

Good news!

Last month, our fearless leader, Dr. Stephenson Beck, won NDSU’s Service Learning Award. In Dr. Beck’s COMM 315: Group Communication, student groups partner with local nonprofits and community organizations to solve real-world communication challenges.

Congrats, Dr. Beck!

Let’s celebrate our summer graduates!

Dr. Funmilayo Odufuwa

🤘Favorite Communication Class: COMM 783: Advanced Organizational Communication I
🤘Favorite Hobby: Listening to music and spending time with friends
🤘Advice to Students: Take it one day at a time
🤘Plans After Graduation: Work in academia

In early May, Xyle Altura was named our prestigious 2025-2026 Undergraduate of the Year, recognized for his outstanding work in the classroom while balancing a part-time role at AdShark Marketing in Fargo.

He is pictured here with his advisor, Dr. Melissa Vosen Callens.

We are proud to celebrate his accomplishments! Congrats, Xyle!

New publication alert! 🚨

Dr. David Westerman, with co-aithors Nicholas D. Bowman and Xinyue Liu, recently published an article in Review of Communication: "The Good, the Bad, and the Learning: Students’ Reported Sources for Learning About the Positives and Negatives of AI."

Summary: The team replicated a study on attitudes toward social media, but focused on AI instead. Schools and teachers were the main source of information about AI’s negatives, while peers had little influence. Personal experience was the strongest influence, suggesting people form opinions about AI’s benefits mostly through trying it themselves.

To read: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15358593.2026.2655121

ICYMI: Dr. Emily Zhan was awarded our 2025–2026 Student Choice Faculty Graduate Teaching Award. Dr. Zhan joined us fall 2025 and immediately made an impression on our graduate students. We are so lucky she is part of our department!

For those interested in our Human Factors in AI certificate, Dr. Zhan is teaching COMM 467: User Experience Research in Artificial Intelligence this summer. The asynchronous online class starts on June 16.

Congratulations to Dr. Funmilayo Odufuwa!

Dr. Odufuwa successfully defended her dissertation, “Exploring the Relationship between the Perception of Virtual Workers on Communication Technology Affordances as Demands and Resources, and Creative Problem-Solving Processes.”

Her advisor was Dr. Cheng Zeng. Drs. Stephenson Beck, David Westerman, and Rajani Pillai (Marketing) were also on the committee.

Summer may have just begun, but we’re already looking ahead to next year!

At our annual Honors Reception in early May, we were excited to recognize and award scholarships to several outstanding students for the upcoming academic year.

Congratulations to all of this year’s recipients! We hope everyone has a wonderful summer, and we look forward to seeing you back on campus this fall.

We packed a lot of fun into the first 15 days of May!

We hope you all enjoy a well-deserved summer break. We can’t wait to welcome our returning students back this fall.

To our graduates, congratulations! Your future is bright, and you’ll always be part of the NDSU Department of Communication community. Once a Bison, always a Bison. 🤘

Meet our 2025-2026 Graduate Student Teaching Award winner, Funmilayo Odufuwa! 🎉

Funmi's passion, dedication, and impact in the classroom make this recognition so well deserved. We were proud to celebrate this achievement!