Lecturer
Affiliations
- Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising
Penne Heede
Category: Faculty
Cassandra L.C. Troy
Assistant Professor
Affiliations
- Department of Journalism
- Institute of Communications Research
Education
- PhD in Mass Communications, 2024, Pennsylvania State University
- MS in Communication, 2018, Purdue University
- Graduate Certificate in Strategic Communication Management, 2018, Purdue University
- BFA in Communication Arts, 2014, Virginia Commonwealth University
- BA in Foreign Language (German), 2014, Virginia Commonwealth University
- Certificate in Product Innovation, 2014, Virginia Commonwealth University
Course Specialties
- JOUR 460: Environmental Journalism
Background
Dr. Troy is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism. Prior to earning her PhD, she worked in nonprofit and sustainability communication. These professional experiences gave her the opportunity to work on a range of educational and strategic communication efforts, such as explanatory signage design, newsletter writing, social media management, and crisis communication planning. That same work also impressed upon her the urgency and complexity involved in communicating environmental issues like climate change to a wide range of audiences. Ultimately, a desire to better understand how to communicate about pressing environmental topics for constructive societal impact motivated her to pursue a PhD at Penn State and a career in academia.
Research and Creative Endeavor
Dr. Troy’s research focuses broadly on strategic environmental communication. Much of her work focuses on climate change in particular and she is specifically interested in examining positive or solutions-oriented environmental messaging as well as psychological drivers and inhibitors of collective pro-environmental and pro-social action in response to such content. She conducts both quantitative and qualitative research.
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Guolan Yang
Assistant Professor
Affiliations
- Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising
- Institute of Communications Research
Education
- Ph.D. in Mass Communications, Pennsylvania State University
Course Specialties
- ADV 310: Introduction to Public Relations
Background
Yang joined the Sandage Department of Advertising in the fall of 2024. She has been actively engaged in academia, teaching a diverse range of advertising and public relations courses. Yang serves as a committee member on the American Academy of Advertising (AAA) Research Committee and as a reviewer for several advertising and marketing journals. She is on the editorial review board of the International Journal of Advertising.
Research and Creative Endeavor
By and large, Yang’s research interest focuses on persuasive communication with a keen focus on social media advertising and influencer marketing. Specifically, Yang investigates how message appeals (e.g., storytelling, humor, comparison) can be consolidated with innovative features of digital technologies to enhance the effectiveness of persuasive communication. Additionally, Yang’s work examines the role of sponsorship disclosures in how consumers react to covert advertising messages on social media.
Yang has recently published research in the International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Interactive Advertising, Journal of Media Psychology, Journal of Health Communication, Corporate Communications, and more.
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Alexandre Gonçalves
Assistant Professor
Affiliations
- Department of Journalism
- Institute of Communications Research
Education
- PhD in Communication, Columbia University
- MSc in Comparative Media Studies, MIT
- BA in Journalism, Faculdade Cásper Líbero (Brazil)
- BSc in Computer Science, Unicamp (Brazil)
Background
Alexandre Gonçalves studies the role of social media in the rise of new social movements. He is also interested in the use of computational methods to understand media ecosystems. During his doctorate, he was involved in projects at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. He also conducted research at the MIT Center for Civic Media. As a Google Journalism Fellow, he worked at the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project. Before moving to the U.S., he worked in Brazil as a science reporter for mainstream media publications and as a software developer.
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Recent News
Melita Garza
Associate Professor and Tom and June Netzel Sleeman Scholar in Business Journalism
Director of Graduate Studies
Affiliations
- Department of Journalism
- Institute of Communications Research
Education
- PhD in Journalism, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Hussman School of Journalism and Media
- MBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- AB in Government, Harvard University
Course Specialties
- Journalism History
- Business Journalism
- Diversity
- Qualitative Research Methods
- Oral History
Background
Melita M. Garza is an associate professor and the Tom and June Netzel Sleeman Scholar in Business Journalism in the Department of Journalism. She is the 2022-2023 Chair of the Standing Committee on Research for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. She was a fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. Prior to getting her PhD, Melita M. Garza was an award-winning journalist, working at the Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg news, and the Los Angeles Times during a two-decade-long career.
Awards
- AEJMC’s Journalism History essay winner: “Ruben Salazar: Beyond Postage Stamp Memory” (2024)
Research and Creative Endeavor
Melita Garza is an American journalism historian who studies news as an agent of democracy, specializing in English- and Spanish-language news, the immigrant press, and coverage of underrepresented groups. She is the lead editor of The Routledge Companion to American Journalism History (2024). She is the author of They Came to Toil: Newspaper Representations of Mexicans and Immigrants in the Great Depression (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018), which was a finalist for the Tankard Book Award, the Frank Luther Mot/ Kappa Tau Alpha Award, and the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) Tejas Fojo Award. Her research has also won awards from the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA), and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) divisions of: History, Minorities and Communication, and International Communication.
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Colleen King
Clinical Associate Professor
Director, Richard and Leslie Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media
Affiliations
- Department of Journalism
- Siebel Center for Design
Background
Colleen King is a clinical associate professor of journalism and the inaugural director of the Richard and Leslie Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media.
She comes to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign following 17 years in television news that culminated in her tenure as executive producer of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Brian Williams. Under King’s leadership, The 11th Hour became the number one cable news program at 11 p.m., labeled “a success” by The Washington Post and “a must-watch program for political junkies and the Beltway crowd” by The Los Angeles Times.
King also produced MSNBC election programming and breaking news coverage anchored by Williams. She covered live events including the Parkland school shooting, the Trump-Putin summit, testimony by former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller on Capitol Hill, Supreme Court confirmation hearings, hurricanes, and other breaking news.
King has covered four presidential and five congressional midterm elections. She has booked and produced interviews with presidents, presidential candidates, and top lawmakers. King has also produced live coverage of the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primaries, party conventions, and presidential inaugurations.
King began at MSNBC as a booking producer for Hardball with Chris Matthews. There, she secured and produced interviews with top politicians and celebrities including Joe Biden, John McCain, Colin Powell, Sandra Day O’Connor, Robert De Niro, Matt Damon, and Robin Williams.
At MSNBC, she also served as senior producer for Morning Joe, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and other network programming.
King began her television news career at CBS News in Washington. She also worked as an associate producer and booker for the Fox News Channel prior to joining MSNBC.
King received a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication with a concentration in journalism education from Kent State University. She earned her bachelor’s degree in political communication from The George Washington University.
Honors
- 2026-27 Dean’s Fellow, focus on artificial intelligence in curriculum and instruction
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Recent News
Carrie Wilson-Brown
Senior Lecturer
Affiliations
- Department of Media & Cinema Studies
- Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising
Video
Recent News
Angela Aguayo
Associate Professor
Affiliations
- Department of Media & Cinema Studies
- Institute of Communications Research
Education
- PhD in Communications, 2005, University of Texas, Austin
Course Specialties
- Introduction to Documentary
- New Media, Culture and Society
- Gender and Popular Culture
- Documentary and Social Change
Research and Creative Endeavor
Angela J. Aguayo is Associate Professor in the Department of Media & Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Angela’s scholarly research and production practice reflect an interdisciplinary focus on documentary, media studies, rhetoric, critical and cultural studies. She is focused on the possibilities for documentary to engage the process of social change, with the specific attention to collective identification and the new media technologies used in conjunction with the genre to mobilize participatory media publics. As a scholar-media artist specializing in participatory and engaged cinema, her most recent book, Documentary Resistance: Social Change and Participatory Media (Oxford University Press, 2019) investigates the political impact of documentary practice. Aguayo is also an award-winning director and producer of documentary shorts utilized in community engagement campaigns, exhibited at museums, and viewed at film festivals around the world, including such prestigious sites as Anthology Film Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago and Harvard University. Most recently, Aguayo is the founding Director of the Illinois Community Media Project, establishing efforts to support media production opportunities for underserved communities across the state of Illinois. She has also served as Acting Director of the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies.
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Recent News
Jonathan Knipp
Senior Lecturer
Affiliations
- Department of Media & Cinema Studies
Recent News
Mike Yao
Professor
Affiliations
- Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising
- Institute of Communications Research
- Gies College of Business
- College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Education
- Ph.D. Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara
- B.A. Psychology & Film Studies double majors, University of California, Santa Barbara
Course Specialties
- Online privacy
- Technology mediated communication
- Technology and advertising
- Programmatic advertising
Research and Creative Endeavor
Mike Yao’s research focuses on the social and psychological impacts of interactive digital media. He conducts research and writes on a variety of topics such as online behavior, digital literacy, and computer-mediated communication. His current interest is in how users perceive and manage personal boundaries on social media. Specifically, he examines people’s attitudes, beliefs and self-protective behaviors related to online privacy from a psychosocial perspective by considering the influence of cognitive appraisal, social norm, and individual differences. A second area of Mike’s active research is the psychological impacts of digital media use. He examined the influence of various interactive media, such as video games and social media, on users’ online and offline social behavior. He is currently trying to extend this line of research to developing an integrated theory of digitally mediated human behavior.
