Profiles 9 | College of Media

Q&A with Patrick Vargas

Get to know some of our College of Media faculty! Patrick Vargas is a professor of advertising. He currently teaches Advertising Research Methods (ADV 281), Psychology of Advertising (ADV 478), and sometimes a graduate-level research or seminar class.

What is your research interest?
I study attitudes and persuasion. I also have an interest in stereotyping and prejudice. Generally, in social caution.

What are some of your hobbies?
I like to read, and I have started working out on a rowing machine. I am weirdly competitive with myself, so I am always trying to row faster than I have the day before. My row machine has a tracker that tells me how fast I am rowing, the amount of energy I am using, and other cool statistics, which ties in with my nerdy love of numbers. Also, I enjoy playing around with my two cats.

What is your favorite movie or TV show?
One of my favorite movies is 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Stanley Kubrick movie. I love how it is ambiguous and most of the special effects still hold up even though it’s been more than 50 years since it was released.

What is your favorite genre of music or favorite band?
My favorite genre of music would be reggae music that was produced by Lee Perry roughly between 1970 and 1977. There were about seven or eight years where he was doing really amazing work and I like to listen to that!

What advice do you have for a student graduating from the College of Media?
I feel like there is a whole world out there and you should go out and see the rest of the world. If you want to go to Chicago after, great! But try to spend time somewhere else, like live in Australia or Belgium and experience the world. It is pretty neat!

—Interview by Isabel Mercado, New Voices Intern

Q&A with Mike Vainisi

Mike Vainisi (BS ’08, journalism) is head of original content at ATTN:. In Spring 2022, he was part of a Media Career Night alumni panel that discussed working in entertainment and Hollywood. (Watch the recording.)

How did you go about picking journalism as your major?
As someone who loved writing in high school, journalism was a great way of turning that interest and passion into a career. It is a very versatile major and you come out of it with a very strong writing background. At first, I saw myself becoming a journalist or reporter, but as time went on, I developed an interest in politics. At a certain point, I decided I wanted to work on political campaigns, which I ended up doing after graduation. Working on political campaigns, I utilized the same skill sets I learned as a journalism major such as communication, writing, and social media. Majoring in journalism ended up being a great background for this career.

What are some of your career highlights so far?
Right now, I oversee media content at a media company called ATTN: in California. We are a combination of a publisher and production company, so we program to social media companies but also make original content, like TV shows, which we then sell to streaming services. I have worked on specials in 2020 to promote voting in the election, featuring three presidents including former President Obama. At this job, I’ve been able to merge my interests in journalism, content creation in media, and politics, which has been a very fun experience.

How do you think the College of Media prepared you for your successful career?
I think the hard skills that you develop are one of the most important skills to have. As someone who hires people, it is super helpful to know that a potential hire has strong writing skills. The same applies to editing, broadcasting, and design. When you’re in school you may not think about it as much, but you begin the process of developing these core skills. I still use the skills that I learned in my editing classes 13 years ago, which is an aspect of my education that was very helpful.

What advice do you have for current journalism students or Media students? What would you have done differently?
Be very flexible in terms of how you want to apply your skills from a career point-of-view. A good way to maintain your flexibility is by maintaining an array of skills. For example, if you are majoring in journalism, then learn how to video edit. A lot of publishers or journalism outlets want to hire writers who can also be, in a way, their own producers. Being able to have those skills to successfully tell a story with the different aspects of media you have learned is incredibly useful. Overall, trying to be as dynamic as you can and maintaining the ability to tell stories no matter what the format is, I’ve found to be vital.

—Interview by Daniela Mejia, New Voices Intern

Stephanie Pérez

Email: smg8@illinois.edu

Research Interests

Stephanie is a PhD Candidate in Communications & Media at the Institute of Communications Research, where her work broadly encompasses mediated Latine/x teen girlhoods, quinceañera ontologies, and streaming media and platform consolidation. Her current projects merge media studies, girlhood studies, Latine/x studies, and cultural studies with reconceptualizations of visibility, presence, resonance, nationhood, and belonging. She holds a B.A. in English & American Literature and Latin American Studies from New York University, and earned an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from California State University, Los Angeles, where she wrote a master’s thesis titled “‘I Got You’: The Modern American Family and Latinx Reconfigurations in Netflix’s One Day at a Time.”

Recent Publications/Presentations

Pérez, S.M. (Forthcoming, 2026). Dazzling intimacies and the mirage of inclusion in And Just Like That…. In I. Molina-Guzmán & A.N. Valdivia (Eds.), (Re)booting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes. New York University Press. ISBN: 9781479821914.
Pérez, S.M. (Forthcoming). Quinceañera ontologies: (Mediated) Latine/x girlhood and other stories. In J.M. Báez & D. León-Boys (Eds.), Quinceañeras: Mediated Approaches to a Cultural Celebration. University of Illinois Press.
Pérez, S.M. & Valdivia, A.N. (2023). Latina Teenhood: Intersectionalizing subjectivities in the post-network era. In B. Calafell & S. Eguchi (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Ethnicity and Race in Communication. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367748586-3.
Valdivia, A.N., Pérez, S.M., & Herrera, Z. (2023). A Dream Quinceañera? Latina Girlhood in Mainstream Media. Smithsonian Voices. National Museum of the American Latino. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smithsonian-latino-center/2022/03/23/latina-girlhood-in-mainstream-media/.
Valdivia, A.N., Cano, A.A., Pérez, S.M., Valkanova, D. (2022). Quinceañeras: Celebration, Joy, and Ethnic Pride [Exhibit]. Spurlock Museum, Urbana, IL, USA. https://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/exhibits/profiles/quince.html.
Pérez, S.M. (2021). Queen of the Neighborhood: Monse Finnie mobilizes and defies the ingenue trope in Netflix’s On My Block. FLOW Journal: OVER*FLOW. 8 October 2021. https://www.flowjournal.org/2021/10/queen-of-the-neighborhood/.

Courses Taught

GWS 100: Introduction to Gender & Women’s Studies, Fall 2025 (TA).
MACS 101: Introduction to the Media, Spring 2025 (TA).
LLS/MACS 250: Latines/xs on the Bronze Screen, Fall 2024 (Instructor of Record).
LAS 399: Leadership & Professional Development, AY 2023-2024 (TA).

Awards and Honors

AY 2023-2025: Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Students
Spring 2024: Legacía Award, La Casa Cultural Latina
Summer 2023: Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies grant, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ($1,000).
Summer 2023: Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ($2,500).
Summer 2023: Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, Italian Language & Area Studies, US Department of Education / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ($7,500, with supplementary funding provided by Middlebury College, VT).
AY 2022-2023: Office of Vice Chancellor for Diversity Equity and Inclusion, “Broadening Inclusion Grant”, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ($5,000).
Fall 2022: Lynne Blanton Student Travel Award, College of Media, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ($850).
Spring 2022 Michael Haley Travel Grant, $1,000. International Communications Association, 72nd Annual Conference, Paris, France.
AY 2020-2023: Graduate College Fellowship, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ($75,000/3 years).
Summer 2020: Summer Predoctoral Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ($2500).

What Most People Don’t Know about Me

I was born and raised in Los Angeles and am interested in keeping up with issues and histories of gentrification, restrictive covenants, race, ethnicity, culture, food, public policy, and social justice in my hometown.

Category: Profiles