May 31, 2007
Faculty Members Earn Promotions, Tenure

Five faculty members in the College of Communications have earned promotions, effective July 1.

S. Shyam Sundar has been promoted to full professor; Marie Hardin, Martin Halstuk and Fuyuan Shen have been promoted to associate professor with tenure; and Pam Monk has been promoted to senior lecturer.

Sundar, founding director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, joined the faculty in 1995 from doctoral studies at Stanford, where communication was his major subject area and psychology his minor. His research emphasizes theory and methodology. He has carved a national reputation for his pioneering work on the effects of new media, particularly how users of new media respond to the medium rather than how they respond to other people via the medium.

He has published more than 25 refereed journal articles and has made more than 60 juried paper presentations at national and international conferences. A recent study found him to be the most published author of Internet-related research in the field of communications across 11 leading journals of communications, marketing and advertising for the period 1993-2003.

He has held leadership positions in national organizations and he serves on the editorial boards of several top-tier journals.

Hardin joined the journalism faculty in 2003 after teaching at the State University of West Georgia. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Georgia. She possesses more than five years of journalism experience—as both an editor and reporter--and she continues to be extensively involved with the profession.

She serves as director of the College’s Dow Jones Center for Editing Excellence and as associate director of research for the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism. She is the author of more than 20 refereed-journal articles and several book chapters. In 2006, she was presented the Mary Ann Yodelis Smith Award for Feminist Scholarship by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). She is active in the American Copy Editors Society, the North American Society for the Sociology of Sports, as well as several divisions of AEJMC.

Halstuk joined the journalism faculty in 2001 after earning his Ph.D. at the University of Florida and teaching at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
He brings to his position more than 20 years of full-time daily newspaper experience, including work as a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, as night city editor at the San Francisco Examiner and as a copy editor at the Los Angeles Times.

His area of research is media law. He has published extensively in academic journals, including law reviews, in magazines and on the op-ed pages of major newspapers. His articles have been cited in briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He teaches reporting and media law.

Shen joined the advertising/public relations faculty in 2001 after earning his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina and teaching at the University of South Dakota.

His research focuses on the psychological effects of advertisements and other media messages on individuals’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. He has published in several of the premier scholarly journals in the field and he is a frequent presenter of papers at national and international academic conferences. He is active in the Mass Communication and Society Division and the Advertising Division of AEJMC, where he has served in leadership positions. He also is an active participant in the American Academy of Advertising. He works extensively with undergraduate and graduate students.

Monk joined the journalism faculty in 1999 after 25 years in public education, where she taught writing and general science. In 1983, she began her continuing career as a freelance writer and playwright.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsday and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She teaches magazine writing. She also serves as faculty adviser to Phroth, the Penn State Humor Magazine, and PSNtv, the student television network. In addition, she is a juried artist for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She also is actively involved with several State College community organizations.

Contact information:
Steve Sampsell
Coordinator of College Relations
Phone: (814) 865-8801
Email:sws102@psu.edu