Two SUNY Oswego students, Luiz Perez-Rivera (pictured) and Elizabeth Mulle, were selected to serve as representatives in the new SUNY Disability Ambassador program, an initiative aimed at promoting accessibility and inclusivity across SUNY campuses. Students with disabilities from across the SUNY system have been selected to participate, hoping to provide a wide range of assistance for those who need it. Perez-Rivera and Mulle meet monthly with this network of students to discuss accessibility points, and what campus support can be provided. Read full story.
Communication studies professor Ulises Mejias offered the following updates for activity during fall 2024:
His 2019 book, “The Costs of Connection” was translated into Arabic, while “Data Grab” (2024) was translated into Korean. “Data Grab” was reviewed in the German magazine Futurzwei as well as the journal Surveillance and Society. Excerpts of his work were also included in Introduction to Law and Regulation (Cambridge University Press, second edition).
During fall 2024, Mejias gave invited presentations at the Digitalia festival in Brazil, Emory University, Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights' Study on Al. He delivered book talks at the Fall for the Book festival, City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, and offered the opening remarks at a Humanities New York event, Critical Thinking in the Digital Age.
Along with his co-author, Nick Couldry, Mejias was interviewed for the podcasts Tech Won’t Save Us, New Books Network, The Data Fix and featured in a show for Deutschlandfunk radio. He also published an op-ed, The Core of Gen-AI is Incompatible with Academic Integrity.
In terms of service to the discipline, Mejias accepted offers to join the editorial boards of the (Turkish) journal Etkileşim and Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society, as well as the advisory board of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law.
Additionally, his work was quoted as having inspired the UK art project DYSPLA_colonialism, a series of “tactile poetic digital sculptures depicting data colonialism,” and YouTube influencer Andrewism posted a video summarizing Mejias’ argument on data colonialism (viewed over 60,000 times).
During the 2024 National Communication Association conference in New Orleans, several communication studies faculty members were very active:
Khairul Islam chaired two panels, “Trust and Influence: The Impact of Changing Media Landscape on Public Relations” and “Greater Regard for the Whole Community: Leveraging Community Resources and Social Capital for Emergency Preparedness and Response.” Islam also presented his co-authored paper, “Compound Crisis Communication and Household Preparedness: Role of Evidence Type and Crisis Message Fatigue,” for which he is lead author, with co-authors Pradeep Sopory and Matthew Seeger, both of Wayne State University. He also served as a panelist on a panel titled “Greater Regard for Health and Science Journalism in the 21st Century: Emerging Practices during Crises.”
Samantha Quinn chaired the Top Student Papers in the Human Communication and Technology Division panel.
As executive committee member and chair of NCA's Teaching and Learning Council, Katherine S. Thweatt chaired the Teachers on Teaching: Honoring the NCA Teaching Award Winners presentation. Thweatt served as chair and presenter on a short course titled “Leveraging Generative AI in Communication Pedagogy for Greater Regard.” The short course also included a pre-conference virtual learning opportunity (VLO) chaired by Thweatt. School of Business faculty member Mohammad Tajvarpour served as an AI expert during the VLO. Thweatt also served as a consultant during NCA's CV Consulting Corner offering insight to individuals on the job market. Throughout the year, Thweatt served on NCA's Academic Freedom Task Force and, while at the conference, she and other task force members shared the results of their work during the NCA Academic Freedom Task Force: Findings and Recommendations panel. Thweatt also chaired the “Student Needs: Accommodations, Disabilities, Apprehension, Dissent and the Double-Bind of the Communication Major” panel. Thweatt is also the Eastern Communication Association's director of sponsorships for ECA 2025 in Buffalo and coordinating the 1st vice president's special programming on Generative AI.
Andrea Vickery presented on “Stress, (Non)Disclosure and Motives for Communication: Communication for Greater Regard in the Student-Instructor Relationship.” She also served as a scholar and offered peer mentorship on scholarship in progress during NCA's “Scholar to Scholar: Regard for Social Media and Health” session.
Jason Zenor presented his paper, “I am My Own Muse: Generative AI, Copyright Law and the Meaning of Creativity,” earning a Top Paper in the Freedom of Expression Division. He also was a panelist on “Critical Legal Developments That Have Arisen With Social Media Regulation and Their Implications For Social Media Doctrine.”
Biological science faculty member C. Eric Hellquist presented a seminar at Buffalo State as part of the Great Lakes-Biology Seminar series. The seminar, “Deflecting succession: Repeated manual removal of invasive cattails (Typha) maintains habitat structure in an Oswego County (NY) intermediate fen,” was co-authored with Faith Page, a SUNY Oswego graduate and wetland ecologist with Fisher Associates in Rochester. In January, Hellquist also gave an oral presentation on the same research, also co-authored with Page. The presentation, “Seven years of manual removal of invasive cattails (Typha) in a Central New York intermediate fen,” was presented at the Northeastern Aquatic Plant Management Society meeting in Saratoga Springs. These presentations described the ongoing, successful efforts to maintain critical habitat in an unusual local wetland of conservation importance. In various iterations, this project is a decade old and has received external funding through the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Oswego County Soil and Water Conservation District in association with the Central New York Land Trust. To date, the project has helped train more than 20 students in ecological research resulting in over a dozen presentations with 11 undergraduate collaborators at national or regional ecological conferences.
Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy Shashi Kanbur presented a talk on “Understanding Science: Why is the Sky Dark at Night?” at the International Space Science Institute in Beijing. The topic looked at possible resolutions to Olbers’ Paradox (probing why the night sky is dark) and the search for strong evidence for a fundamental question in astrophysics: "Has the Universe been around forever?" In addition, Kanbur was among the co-authors of “A theoretical framework for BL Her stars III. A case study: Robust light curve optimisation in the LMC,” published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Rebecca Mushtare, an art and design faculty member and associate dean of graduate studies, serves as the key facilitator for a new SUNY-wide effort supporting digital accessibility. SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. announced Mushtare's participation during the launch of the inaugural fellowships for the SUNY Accessibility Advocates and Allies Faculty Fellowship Program. The SUNY Universal Design for Learning Project team reached out to Mushtare to help expand SUNY Oswego's successful Faculty Accessibility Fellows program across all SUNY campuses. Read full story. (Photo by SUNY/Valerie Caviness)
Damian Schofield, director of the SUNY Oswego master’s in human-computer interaction program, and computer science major Johnathon Hall published “An Assessment of the Usability of ChatGPT” in the International Journal of Recent Trends in Human Computer Interaction. The project and paper scrutinized the accuracy of the results produced by ChatGPT, as well as the functionality of the interface and prompt generation within ChatGPT. They also explored concerns regarding the ethical implications of employing an AI agent for academic research and writing along with accessibility and availability.
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